


Purgatory

by teasoni



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychosis, Romance, Slow Burn, i promise they ram eventually, look i have no fuCking idea what to tag this, shega
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2019-05-13 03:50:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 48,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14741474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teasoni/pseuds/teasoni
Summary: Shepard was his hero. Alliance poster-child, CO of theNormandy, bearer of more medals than he had fingers. She was everything he ever wanted to be. Lieutenant James Vega wore her influence proudly, certain that everything Shepard did was for the greater good.But now, years later, life for Shepard has changed. She's faced with the stark reality: no longer a decorated Alliance hero, she is imprisoned and disgraced, stripped of all rank and privilege and left to rot in a jail cell. To the outside galaxy she is a source of disgust and fear - and yet it's Lt. James Vega, the most disillusioned of all, who offers her a chance at retribution. But saving the galaxy twice has left her with more scars than anybody could ever realise; James is forced to help her face her past, present, and the uncertain future of a galaxy under threat of complete annihilation.[follows events between me2 and me3]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is a rewrite of a previous fic i wrote under the same name. comments and kudos are immensely appreciated!

Omega.

Back when James Vega had first recruited for the Alliance navy he’d never heard of this place. But over the years and after countless off-planet missions into the pirate-riddled nest of the Attican Traverse, Omega became a place he knew far more about than he’d ever care to admit. The place was infested with criminals and those too poor or too lost to go elsewhere; Omega was a den of sin, as far as James was concerned, and he didn’t go near it unless he had to.

So how, then, did he end up here, sat at some seedy bar full of batarian pirates and asari whores? Nobody knew, least of all him. Perhaps he thought that drinking himself into a stupor on Omega was the best way to deal with the fallout on Fehl Prime. What a stupid fucking idea.

James knocked back the last of his beer - tasted like varren piss and probably had little to no alcohol in it at all - and signalled to the barkeep for another. The turian looked him over with fluttering mandibles, which James could only interpret as something of a grimace, but complied without a word. The bar was too loud, packed too close, full of sweaty, stinking bodies that had gone unwashed for too long. The Omega slums had a particular smell, James thought. A bad one.

All he could do was focus his attention on the hand of cards he held. A shit hand, if he was to be honest, but he was no novice at this. He’d already scraped most of the other players’ pockets bare, chips stacked up on the table before him amidst empty glasses. Most of them were batarians; batarians were the worst opponents when it came to cards. Or, perhaps, the best - either way, they presented no challenge to James, who wrung them for every credit they were worth.

The sound of the news bulletin was loud; James pressed a thumb to his ear. His translator had been buggy ever since he’d taken a vicious knock to the side of the head by some Blood Pack thug, but a few jabs usually got it working again. Sure enough, after a bit of wiggling, the harsh chords of the batarian voices evened out into something he could understand. The table of batarians were louder than James really cared for, but Omega was full of petty criminals with their heads up their asses, so he didn’t pay it much mind. The barkeep gave him another beer that tasted even worse than the last one.

“...while the Citadel Council scrambles to denounce the so-called terrorist attacks allegedly carried out by Commander Shepard, batarian officials are demanding retribution…”

James bristled and twisted his bottle between his hands. The screens in the bar were playing the same story over and over; looking up to the screen above the bar, James saw gritty flashes of Commander Shepard’s face between clips of the Citadel coup and other various footage. The footage showed glimpses of her, telling of a time when nobody was really sure if Shepard was dead or alive, or if she was responsible for the trail of devastation left in the Collector’s wake.  _ But she got the job done, right? Unlike you. _ James took another swig of his beer.

“Shepard this, Shepard that… she’s like the Council’s pet.” The batarians burst into laughter around him and began to make obscene howling noises. “All she needs now is a collar and a leash.”

“...Councillor Udina has publically denied that the human Alliance had anything to do with the destruction of the mass relay…”

Before James could reason with himself, he’d thrown down his cards and pushed away from the table, turning and squaring his shoulders. The batarians watched him, partly perplexed and partly annoyed at James for interrupting their game. “Hey, human!” one of them called. “It’s your bet!”

“...batarian leaders are calling for Shepard’s head…”

Calmly, and without uttering a single word, James turned and reached up to the wall-mounted screen behind him. With a single tug of his powerful arms he tore it clean off the wall, the noise alone attracting most of the bar’s attention.

“That’s gonna cost you, kid,” the old krogan behind the bar snarled at him, though his lack of any discernible reaction told James that this sort of thing probably happened more often than not. James jerked his chin in the direction of the card table and its piles of chips.

“Take my winnings. Keep the change, too. So long as I don’t have to listen to this bullshit.” And it was bullshit, too - James, however, was in no mood to explain  _ why. _

By now he’d drawn the batarians’ attention. One of them - the biggest one, James noticed, most likely the group’s leader - got to his feet, sporting a hostile sneer. “You don’t think the batarians deserve payback?”

Another rose, spurred on by his friend’s words, and James took an instinctive step back. “You a Shepard lover, human?”

The alcohol in James’s veins made his limbs heavy. His translator glitched out in his ear, affording him snippets of deep, guttural batarian vocals between cusps of words.

“Let’s just sit down and finish the game,” he said.

Bargains were always wasted on batarians.

 

Everything spiralled out of control after that. The barkeeper began to yell, and some other patrons cried out in fright while others got to their feet and cheered; the batarian collapsed to the floor with blood gushing from his shattered skull, his buddies taking only a second to gape before leaping to their feet and rushing at James all at once. It passed in a blur of punches and clumsily-aimed kicks made slippery by the alcohol in his system, and even the pain when James tackled one of the batarians through a pane of glass was somewhat dulled. He was aware - vaguely - of the blood on his skin, sticky and blinding his left eye, though whether it was his blood or somebody else’s he wasn’t sure. His head thumped, vision swimming, but his training kicked in and kept him going. Punches were thrown, teeth were kicked in, eyes were gouged; it was only when a round was fired into the wall mere inches from his head that the fighting stopped. None of them were armed aside from a few chivs tucked into a belt or boot, and while they may have been stupid enough to smash through Omega’s grimy streets, they sure as hell weren’t stupid enough to take a knife to a gunfight.

A handful of fully-armed Alliance soldiers emerged from Omega’s dingy half-darkness. James squinted; they were lead by a man wearing officer’s stripes, which gleamed golden upon his epaulets. A man James recognised immediately, even through the blood seeping down his forehead and into his eyes. Hell, he’d recognise that face anywhere.

“Lieutenant Vega. You’re a hard man to find.”

Suddenly James felt incredibly foolish. Here he was, having been caught in a tousle with batarians, bleeding and bruised and out of breath. Not a good look for a marine, that was for sure, especially since he was still dressed in his fatigues for the most part. Standing, James wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, swallowing dryly and trying his best to duck his head so nobody would see the ugly flush climbing his neck. “Admiral Anderson. Sir.”

The batarians, upon having caught sight of more than one Alliance rifle, fled muttering into the side-alleys. James was alone, now, all eyes on him, and he wished that the floor would just open and swallow him entirely.

Anderson jerked his rifle in James’s direction. “Dust yourself off and follow me,” he said, tone curt and words clipped. He obviously wasn’t in any mood to mess around with formalities, though his presence on Omega in the first place ought to have dictated as much. James’s brain was doing somersaults; what sort of trouble was he in now? Surely they wouldn’t send an admiral to clean up some street brawl. Anderson must have sensed James’s worry, because his eyes hardened a little, and he added, “That’s an order.”

Not seeing what else he could do, James followed Anderson and his soldiers, tucking his shirt back into his fatigues and tentatively touching a hand to his forehead to check the damage - it wasn’t extensive, thankfully. Not compared to the unconscious batarians currently strewn over the ground behind them. Their pace was brisk, purposeful, and with each passing second James grew more and more curious about what the  _ hell  _ was going on. Why was Anderson here? Why did he have a whole squad of guards with him? And why were they looking for  _ him _ , of all people?!

“I’m taking you back for more training,” Anderson told him as they drew up beside a transit shuttle. James stopped, prompting Anderson to turn and fix him with a stony glower; James leaned his weight against the shuttle, his head swimming from the adrenaline and the exhaustion and the confusion. He felt  _ angry _ . Anderson had dragged him away from the happy oblivion of Omega’s seedy bars and piss-weak beer, and nobody was giving him the answers he needed.

“What the hell for?” he bit out, his voice betraying his tiredness.

Anderson thrust a finger against James’s chest. “It’s time for you to get over the incident on Fehl, Vega. It’s time for you to be the soldier we expect of you.”

Get over it? He expected James to just  _ get over  _ what had happened on Fehl Prime…? James gritted his teeth against the violent surge of anger in his gut. Anderson had no idea what happened at Fehl Prime. He had  _ no idea _ what James had seen, what he’d done, the choices he’d had to make. He had to push his voice out when he spoke, keeping his tone low and even lest he begin shouting and make his situation even worse. “No disrespect,  _ sir _ , but I’d rather not  _ get over it _ .”

“You’re a damned fool if you think I’m gonna let a soldier as good as you piss your life away in this shithole,” Anderson replied hotly. He was  _ mad _ , but what about? None of this made sense to James. None of it. “You’re coming with me to Earth.  _ Now. _ ”

“Forget it. There’s nothing left for me there.”

“I’ve got something for you. Something you  _ haven’t _ had before.”

The silence in the shuttle was worse than the brawl, as far as James was concerned. He sat between two marines, the backseat cramped and uncomfortable, watching the back of Anderson’s head as though he might be able to glean some answers from it. Anderson didn’t say a word until the shuttle set down at the loading docks and the doors hissed open.

It was then he saw it: the  _ Normandy _ , battered and yet still magnificent, sitting in a dock not too far from the shuttle bay. For a dazzlingly bright moment James didn’t even question the fact that the SR1 had been blown apart by the Collectors; all he knew was that it was  _ there _ , right in front of his eyes. As they drew closer, however, he noticed the orange and black of the Cerberus decal streaked along the side of the ship; it felt as though a shadow had fallen over it, somehow, and it sat bleak and silent in the dock, appearing more and more frayed the closer they got. What the hell was it doing here, on Omega? And why was Anderson leading him right towards the airlock?

“Just throw me in the brig and be done with it.” He’d meant it as a joke, perhaps, as bad as it was - the silence made him nervous, but Anderson threw a half-amused glance back over his shoulder as he keyed in a code to the airlock. The doors slid open with a worrying groan.

“Not far off,” Anderson said. “Though the brig won’t be for you. You’ll be guarding the brig, Lieutenant.” He paused, then, as if gauging James’s reaction. “One prisoner in particular.”

Quite suddenly everything clicked into place.

_ Shepard. _


	2. Chapter 2

“Welcome aboard the  _ Normandy _ , Lieutenant.”

James couldn’t look away from the ship. It was  _ enormous _ , far bigger than the original SR1 - and James would know, too, considering all the time he’d spent researching that ship back before it had been blasted to pieces in space. He knew almost all of its measurements by heart. And this ship? It sure as hell wasn’t the  _ Normandy  _ he knew.

The ship’s interior was dark and quiet past the airlock, its silence broken only by the stifled hum of the eezo core below deck. Everything felt… off, somehow, as though the entire ship had been swallowed by grief, a funeral procession through deep space. Even the ambience lighting had been turned down until only the hazy shapes of the cockpit were visible, lights glimmering and swimming around the pilot like a tiny, contained galaxy. The pilot didn’t so much as acknowledge their arrival. If anything, James noticed begrudgingly, he made a pointed attempt to ignore them.

Anderson led James through the CIC and towards the ship’s main elevator. They didn’t stop, they didn’t speak, and the short distance between them grew frostier by the second. In fact, the entire ship seemed cold; far colder than it should be. James tried his best to keep his eyes tracked on the floor beneath his feet, but he couldn’t help glancing up every now and again to take a look at his surroundings; an astounding amount of systems were dark, the ship manned by little more than a skeleton crew still dressed in Cerberus colours, all of whom refused to look at him. He was glad for that, at least. Even Anderson’s silence was unsettling, but James didn’t even attempt to break that tension. It wasn’t the place for it and it certainly wasn’t the time.

Shutting down Cerberus has been the Alliance’s top priority. They’d only gone rogue a little while ago, and the news that Jane Shepard had joined their ranks frightened the Alliance brass into action. She was legally dead. Her involvement with Cerberus meant that not only was she  _ alive _ and dangerous, but that Cerberus had the means to pull stunts like that without relying on the main taproot of the military. James wasn’t supposed to know that, of course, but he did anyway. Rumours travelled fast in the Terminus, carried along with slavers and criminals, and the most alarming thing was that while all the rumours about Shepard were wildly different in superficial detail, they all revolved around a common theme: Shepard was a criminal. Most of the galaxy’s most notorious bounty hunters had made their desire for the chase known, but they weren’t stupid. They knew that trying to take down a woman like Shepard would get them killed: if not by Cerberus or the Alliance, then by Shepard herself. Whatever she was doing - nobody was actually sure  _ what _ \- it was important, and it was something the Alliance was willing to risk life and limb for. Or maybe they were just trying to silence her. James never could be sure.

They’d caught her, in the end. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised.

Slowly, the elevator ground to a halt and opened, letting Anderson and James out into a dimly-lit corridor. They made their way towards one of the doors: it was heavily reinforced, with a multitude of locks that Anderson overrode with a passcode pressed into the holopad on the wall. With a series of heavy clunks, the door hissed open, and admitted them into a small, low-ceilinged storage area.

James’s lungs tightened as his eyes darted about. It was dark, just like the rest of the ship, and the room was divided by a large, reinforced wall. There was only one door.

“The brig,” Anderson explained, turning to throw a glance over his shoulder at James, who stood rigidly by the doorway. “And this -,” with a sigh, Anderson gestured widely towards the brig’s holding cell. “Is Commander Shepard.”

James hadn’t even seen her, at first. Shepard remained completely still and completely silent, sat in the very darkest corner of the cell, shrouded in absolute shadow. It was only when Anderson mentioned her that he became aware of her presence; squinting just a little, James made out the inhuman glow of her eyes. He could see the fissures he’d only heard about before, thin and red as though her very veins were full of molten lava.

From her seat in the darkness, she glowered.

“Forgive me, sir,” James started, licking his lips nervously. Shepard’s eyes were rooted on him. He could  _ feel  _ it. “But, uh… why am I here? To guard Shepard, I mean.”

A tic of annoyance tugged at Anderson’s brow. “I think everyone knows damn well by now that Shepard can hold her own. No -  _ you’re  _ here to make sure she stays quiet and stays put until we get back to Earth. Shepard’s… her state isn’t good. She has pushed her body to its very limits and her mind isn’t too far behind. We can’t predict what she’ll do. The Shepard we knew before Cerberus got their hands on her is dead and gone, Lieutenant, and you’d do well to remember that. She isn’t the woman you or I remember.” Pausing, Anderson sent Shepard a long, withering stare, which she looked away from James long enough to return. Neither of them looked pleased, and if Anderson’s clenched fists were anything to go by, there was far more to it than James could glean just by looking. “Either way, you’re alone on this job for now, and I expect you to undertake the task to the best of your ability. Understood?”

James saluted crisply, feeling stupid for ever having asked. Shepard was a wild card. Of course they wouldn’t just leave her unsupervised.

Anderson gave him a quick tour of the ship, showing him the armor lockers and the crew bunk he’d be occupying while he was on board. The entire time, James was acutely aware of the crew watching his every move. When he asked, nervously, exactly  _ why  _ they’d chosen him for this job, Anderson replied that he was the only person whose record showed they might be able to handle it. James wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.

Every single thing about this job was confusing and Anderson refused to give away anything. All James could do - for now, at least - was to follow along and trust blindly. Neither of those were things James would do normally, and to do so grated against every shred of intuition he had. It felt like hours until Anderson finally took James back up to the cockpit and the  _ Normandy _ ’s unamused pilot.

“Joker,” Anderson greeted the pilot shortly. “I’d like you to meet Lieutenant James Vega, the latest addition to our crew.”

The pilot - Joker, James had to remind himself, and he couldn’t help but wonder how on earth he’d gotten a nickname like that - swivelled around in his seat, his cap pulled low over his eyes. “Right. Give Shepard a left hook for turning us in and not going pirate and I might consider not blasting you out the airlock.” His tone was tightly-controlled, but it didn’t take a genius to detect the anger beneath it. Joker looked towards Anderson and nodded in what appeared to be a mock salute of respect. “Once you’re off the ship of course, sir. Wouldn’t want you to get stuck with any paperwork.”

Anderson let out another sigh - a sound James was growing used to by then, and one that began to alert him to just how truly tiring this job was - and rubbed a hand over his face as Joker swivelled around again. “We’ve been through this, Moreau -,”

“Yeah, yeah, going pirate would’ve gotten us all killed, blah, blah. Still better than this.” The last part came out as a mumble; each jab of Joker’s fingers to the flight controls was short and furious. “Where to,  _ Admiral? _ ”

“I’ve given EDI our course. She should have plotted it already.”

“Navigation systems have been updated,” confirmed a voice that seemed to come from nowhere in particular and yet everywhere at once. The fine hairs on the backs of James’s arms bristled, and he pressed himself into the darkness of the cockpit, swallowing. Disembodied voices always made him nervous. “Final destination: Earth.”

“A VI?” he asked; James had always been wary around those sorts of things.

“I am EDI,” the voice replied. “Enhanced Defence Intelligence, crafted by Cerberus to aid Commander Shepard. Welcome aboard the  _ Normandy _ , Lieutenant Vega.”

Somehow - though James had no idea how a VI could sound  _ frosty _ \- EDI’s tone gave him a hard time believing it.

“Uh… thanks.”

The ship lurched to life beneath them. James watched from the slim cockpit windows as they pulled away from Omega’s docking bay, slipping soundlessly from the port and out into the endless void of the Traverse. As unwelcoming and hostile as it was, James couldn’t deny that the  _ Normandy  _ was a beautiful ship. It moved silently, its steering smooth and hair-trigger sensitive. He watched the flash of stars until Anderson clapped a hand to his shoulder, making him start a little, and nodded in the direction of the CIC.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he told James. “I’ve got other things to see to. A warning, though, Lieutenant: you are the enemy on this ship. There are other Alliance staff here, but they don’t have the clearance you do. The crew  _ will _ resent you. The majority of them worked for Cerberus, and a good number of them have grown incredibly loyal to Shepard. If I were you, I’d keep your conversations short. If you need anything just tell EDI.”

“Yes, sir.”

James was left to find his way back down to the brig on his own. Now that he didn’t have Anderson with him, the ship somehow seemed even larger and even darker than it had before, and the fact that he had unrestricted access to pretty much the entire ship made him more nervous than excited. The crew about him spoke in hushed tones, though this time they spared him a glance or two, which was even worse than when they’d ignored him completely. James - who had previously been unarmed and dressed in civilian clothes - ignored them as best he could, and took the time to clean up and dress himself in standard Alliance fatigues, which were already provided beneath his bunk.

The starchy material was familiar; it forced a smile to his lips. He truly had loved life in the navy, though ever since Fehl Prime things had been… sour. Memories, trauma, all of that… it made things hard, especially knowing that he had the blood of an entire colony on his hands. This, though - being here, aboard the  _ Normandy _ \- felt like something of a new beginning. He spared himself a quick glance in the crew bathroom mirror, touching the sensitive split in his lip from the fight on Omega and making sure his translator was working again, before heading to his weapons locker and picking out a standard M8 assault rifle to sling over his shoulder.

Now for the hard part.

Shepard’s cell was just as dark as when he’d left it. Once his eyes adjusted, he could see that she hadn’t moved so much as an inch; the door hissed shut behind him, leaving him alone with her in the stifling silence. There’d been a time when James would have given his right hand to be alone in a room with Commander Shepard. Now he wasn’t so sure.

The only furniture on his side of the room was a single chair set against the wall. Unsure what else to do, he sat, shifting his rifle onto his lap and peering past the reinforcements into Shepard’s cell. It appeared to be just as sparsely furnished: a narrow cot, a small ensuite, and a bench against the far wall. The door to her cell contained a small slot to be used for meals, but other than that, there was nothing.

If James was to be honest, he’d always wanted to meet Jane Shepard. She was his hero, after all, and he’d always tune into the news when she was awarded a medal, adding it to the gleaming collection pinned to her breast. He remembered what she’d looked like during those ceremonies: hair pulled back from her face, perfectly composed, her uniform neat and well-fitted, and she’d always smile when the medal was pinned to her, no matter how dearly she had paid for it. He thought about it, sometimes - how they’d meet. Perhaps by accident, perhaps during a training drill, perhaps during a press conference. Perhaps she’d shake his hand, smile at him, look at him with those bottomless brown eyes. He’d never imagined it to be anything like this, though. Somehow the misery of it all outweighed the novelty.

Shepard did not speak to him. She barely looked at him; her eyes remained on the wall, or on the reflection, her gaze stopping short of actually reaching him. She was silent, as though his arrival had switched something inside her, and she sat still, staring, lost in thought. James sometimes wondered what she was thinking about, but upon recalling some of the things Shepard had been through he decided he’d rather not know. So instead he settled for just sitting across the narrow aisle from her cell, watching her, gun heavy in his hand. He didn’t know why they insisted on him carrying a gun at all times; she was locked away behind high-security locks and bolts and containment fields. She ignored his presence and completely refused to acknowledge him, even choosing to eat her meals with her back turned -  _ when  _ she ate, which wasn’t often.

She remained shrouded in mystery, and even what he thought he knew about Jane Shepard came into question each time he looked at the woman sat in front of him. He remembered the vids of her after she took down Saren, of the tall, stately woman who stood with a rigid spine and upturned chin, of how dark and bottomless her eyes had seemed even through the gritty mess hall screen. Eyes that were now fractured with magma. He remembered her skin, the golden tint of it and the smattering of dark freckles over her nose, but now that was splitting apart as well, and where she’d once stood tall she now stood hunched and broken. When he’d first seen her on the news he’d felt electricity fill him from his head to his toes, and now wasn’t so different; unlike last time, however, this feeling wasn’t pleasant.

Despite the heightened security of the brig, Shepard remained shackled at the wrists. James had only seen shackles like that on a few occasions, most of which had involved high-risk criminals. They were sleek, black hydraulic cuffs that were linked by a short chain, and that were full of enough electrostatic power to knock out a large horse. A Quarian invention, apparently, made for the asari to contain rogue Ardat-Yakshi. The little red light flashed against the inside of Shepard’s left wrist.

“So, tell me.” Shepard’s voice was low. Husky. It sent a warm shiver racing up James’s spine; he found her eyes through the darkness and held her gaze, his mouth quite suddenly very dry. “Are you surprised?”

It took him a moment to reply. “I don’t know. This is all… uh. I’m still getting my head around it.”

Shepard chuckled and broke his gaze with a little shake of her head. Her cuffs clinked as she shifted, leaning back against the far wall of her cell, and the two of the fell into an uneasy silence. She continued to watch him. He continued to watch her, too, despite his senses telling him to look elsewhere, anywhere other than those eyes of hers. They  _ glowed _ , two pinpoints of liquid gold in the darkness, accentuated only by the fissures in her skin that revealed red lights beneath her skin. James had never seen anything like it - Anderson hadn’t enlightened him in that area, either, so all James could do was speculate. Everything about Shepard made him uneasy.

As if she sensed it, Shepard leaned forwards, her teeth glinting as she smiled a smile James knew wasn’t entirely genuine. “I’ll try not to be any trouble.”

He said nothing in return. Shepard resented him just as much as the rest of the crew did: that much was obvious. Not that he could really blame her, of course, but after setting half the galaxy on fire in her pursuit of the Collectors she couldn’t  _ possibly _ have expected any different, surely. What James was most worried about was exactly what  _ trouble  _ meant in terms of Shepard. Probably nothing he’d survive.

But Shepard seemed keen on keeping her word, and sat back again, lapsing into silence. So this was what it was going to be like? Days of sitting in a chair watching Shepard doing nothing? It was hardly riveting work, though it  _ was  _ better than rotting away in a hovel like Omega. It would look good on James’s record, too.

As he watched her, James wondered if Shepard knew anything about Fehl Prime. She was the sort of woman who knew everything about anything, so he wouldn’t be surprised if she did. Part of him didn’t want to ask her what she knew. Another part of him  _ needed _ to. But he kept his mouth shut, because gobbing off about some belly-up mission that resulted in countless deaths wasn’t the sort of thing to bring up on the first day of a job, and especially not as small talk with a galactic terrorist.  _ Dios _ , James thought with a little shake of his head.  _ Omega must’ve screwed me over more than I thought. _

* * *

 

It wasn’t just Shepard that made James uneasy.

The entire ship was on tenterhooks, as though the entire crew was waiting for the hangman’s noose. Nobody spoke to James except the handful of other Alliance marines, and whenever he came too close to one of the crew he’d glean the hard clip of a passing shoulder or a lip curled in disgust. They resented him. Hated him, even. He understood that, though, and couldn’t bring himself to blame them for it. All he could do was grit his teeth and bear it.

One of the marines - Westmoreland, she said her name was - told James that ever since Shepard had been locked up in the brig the entire crew had fallen to pieces. Shepard’s core squadron had split up into different parts of the ship, a number of them having vanished completely right from beneath the Alliance’s nose. According to what she’d heard, a handful of Cerberus operatives and criminals slipped away unnoticed during the  _ Normandy’s  _ handover, and Shepard’s valued Quarian engineer had already been returned to the Migrant Fleet. James heard snippets about the others, too, though it was difficult to tell where the truth ended and rumors began. An asari Justicar? Even James found that hard to believe. Slowly the crew were being relocated - fractured, Westmoreland said, in order to lessen their strength.

It was a mess.

What made it worse was that Shepard seemed to enjoy his discomfort; she never did anything, and she never said a word, but he knew she did. He could see it in her eyes and in the set of her mouth whenever he went into the brig; only Alliance personnel were allowed in. Shepard had no visitors. The entire deck had been cordoned off to make sure of that. No connections, no cracks in the walls, no escape. Nobody was sure what to make of this ‘new’ Shepard, and even though it was never mentioned, almost everybody was afraid of how little they knew about her. But there was still some of the old Shepard there, James decided. There  _ had  _ to be. When she stood with her back to him he could see it; the broad shoulders and strong back, the curves of her legs made stark in comparison to the holding cell. She was a black ink-blot against a page, glowing red magma wrapped in black cloth in the cradle of a prison she’d once called home. She didn’t belong there and he could only guess at how it was eating away at her.

But he said nothing, and neither did she.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for so much positive feedback, i'm honestly floored!!!!! seeing people like my stuff is literally the biggest motivator, so thank you!

Shepard had never liked solitude. She’d never been a quiet sort of woman: everywhere she went was emblazoned with light and noise because it made her  _ happy  _ and kept her from terrible, terrible darkness. Shepard, after all her years with the Alliance - after all her years of scouring the Terminus Systems as a black-ops agent, all the times she’d lain beneath a torturer’s knife, all the time she’d spent being cut open and hardening like a scar - she wasn’t scared of much. There was very little, now, that frightened her. But the darkness and silence still never failed to bring a chill to her blood. And, so, to mitigate her fear she would seek light and noise to banish it. Old friends had commented on it: how she always brought life to a room, how she always managed to bring brightness to the surface. She was loud and brazen, but it was all a cover-up, used to hide her desperate fear of the black, pounding agony of loneliness.  _ That  _ was something she’d never admit to.

Silence was something that always accompanied bad things, as far as Shepard was concerned. As a child her apartment aboard the Jupiter space station was only ever silent when her parents were out on deployment, leaving her to fester in loneliness at a time where she had no friends, nobody to turn to, nobody in whom she could seek comfort. Silence had meant death during the First Contact War when she’d been little more than a child staring in terror at a turian - one of the first turians ever seen by human eyes - with their mandibles and carapaces that, to her in all her childish wisdom, had seemed grotesque and violent. Silence meant war and isolation and she’d borne it, at least for a little while, choking on the dark emptiness of her existence. That was before Shepard began to chase the noise and the light; before she’d started picking brawls and making trouble to escape it, surrounding herself with loud music and shouting and rushing adrenaline. Silence was a black pounding heart she could never hope to swallow, and yet she tried, how she tried.

It always caught her, in the end.

At least, she thought, Anderson had been somewhat gracious about it all. He’d been furious, certainly, both out of concern for Shepard and out of horror for what she’d done. And to rattle Anderson, of all people… part of her was proud of herself for it. And yet, despite that, he had been kind to her. He’d let Shepard say goodbye to Jack and Miranda before he allowed the chaos of the handover to mask their flight. He’d let Shepard say goodbye to Tali, to Samara, to Garrus, to all the others. And then he’d sat her down and  _ talked  _ to her as though she was a human, just like him, and not some patchwork invention of Cerberus, as she knew herself to be.

“Why not shoot me like a dog and be done with it?” she’d bit out. Her words were venom - she had forgotten how to make them gentle. “God only knows I deserve it.”

“Bullshit! You never deserved any of this, Shepard, and you know it. You were a fool - you let Cerberus get to you. But you didn’t deserve it.”

It was true, she supposed, as much as she liked to believe that she was impervious to Cerberus’s influence. She’d been too shaken and distraught from being brought back to life; in those early days she’d been as pliable as an infant, susceptible to Cerberus’s influence, and she had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. She just didn’t realise until it was too late. Until the madness had set in.

“I killed so many,” she told him, and somehow saying the words made her feel even worse. They made things real. “Children.  _ Families _ . Innocent civilians. Merely because they stood in my way.” She looked up at him with gaunt eyes and his expression tightened with unease. He still wasn’t used to the sight of her. Nobody was. “You saw the footage?”

Anderson nodded.

Her next words come out hoarse with grief. “It was worse.”

The blood on her hands haunted her. It kept her up at night - had done for months before they’d brought down the Collector base. Kept her from eating. Made her sparse dreams so awful she’d shoot up on stimulants just to stay awake. That, and the hallucinations… they were unbearable. Before she’d first stepped foot on the  _ Normandy  _ she hadn’t had any serious psychotic relapses (God, just the term made her shudder) for years and years, but this… this was something else. The whole situation with Saren, the Collectors, the Reapers - she’d never experienced anything like it before. It had come to the point where even the faintest whiff of blood would make her head swim, but she pushed on, she  _ had  _ to push on. There was no other choice.

Anderson, somehow, had understood that.

And so Shepard saved the galaxy for a second time, and the Alliance retaliated by locking her up on her own ship and keeping her in the dark. Perhaps they hoped she’d say something. Perhaps they hoped the fear of being court martialed would draw her to confess.  _ That  _ thought made her laugh. How insulting.

Then came James Vega. He was an interesting character, Shepard thought. Sure, she’d seen her fair share of jacked-up marines, but there was something in James’s expression that struck her the wrong way. It was as intuitive as it was frightened, as though he was approaching a trapped animal rather than a terrorist, and he held himself awkwardly. It was unbefitting of his character, she noted curiously, and wondered just what caused that dissonance. The busted lip helped too, of course.

She’d promised both Anderson and herself that she’d behave. The wellbeing of her crew relied on that; she bit down on her fury each time it rose, and managed to keep a lid on her temper. It was difficult - whatever Cerberus had done with her had fucked up her self-control completely, leaving her vulnerable to nigh-uncontrollable fits of rage and grief that had, incidentally, won her as many battles as it had lost. This was more than just “behaving herself” - this was about her trying to regain the control she’d lost. She also didn’t want to disappoint Anderson any more than she already had.

Alliance personnel filed in and out of the ship; Shepard wasn’t allowed to see anyone on her crew, and  _ especially  _ not her core squad. She wasn’t used to being without them, and being stuck in a cell without Miranda keeping an eye on her was more unnerving than Shepard really expected it to be. EDI, at least, had convinced the Alliance she was only a VI, which was a small comfort - she still had control over the ship’s systems and was unerringly loyal to Shepard.

“You won’t  _ do _ anything, will you?” Anderson had asked with narrowed eyes, causing Shepard to raise her hands in response.

“I promise.”

 

Sometimes, at night, Shepard’s mind would turn to Ashley. It would turn to those times, years ago, before everything had gotten complicated. When they’d stand side-by-side in the SR1 storage bay and mod guns for hours, working as slowly and as carefully as they could, using it as an excuse to talk to each other about pasts and art and long-lost lovers. Ashley had woken something in Shepard that had lay dead for many years: it was electric and familiar, yet homely, almost, in a way that made Shepard feel warm. Safe.

Shepard found something of herself in Ashley Williams: a desire for sensitivity yet the unavoidable necessity for everything except it. When she had told Ashley that an interest in old and romantic poetry  _ wasn’t  _ a waste of time, the young woman’s face had lit up like the sun and she’d smiled, how she’d smiled, striking Shepard dumb with overwhelming affection. When Shepard had rubbed her chin and listened to her as she spoke of her faith, without arguing or interrupting, a shy and pretty flush had risen to Ashley’s cheeks and Shepard, then, had been seized by the sudden urge to kiss her.

Even now, jailed on her own ship and forced to stagnate in the dark and the cold, the thought made Shepard smile. Ashley, sweet Ashley. She was everything Shepard had ever wanted to be at her age; she had the same frustrations, the same sadness, the same insatiable fire, and it all made Shepard want to do nothing more than take hold of her and never let go.

Ashley - or, at least, the thought of her, the memories - was a rare and much-needed respite for Shepard. Her brain was like a short-circuiting system, offering up flickers of voices and faces that were never really there, trying to needle in beliefs that weren’t true, trying to upset Shepard’s understanding of reality. It always had, forcing her to walk along the precipice of ridicule for as long as she could remember. But she couldn’t let it, because it would mean ridicule, and everything she’d fought to achieve would be lost. And so she clung to whatever concrete happiness she could to try and keep herself under control, though whether or not it was working was another matter entirely.

From Ashley her mind would turn to Kaidan; pure-hearted Kaidan whose smile had never really faded from her memory. She wondered if he’d be disappointed in her. If he’d give her a lecture on moral righteousness in that gentle voice of his, eyes forgiving even beneath the storminess of his brow. Sadness tempered those thoughts - after all, she’d lead him to his death on Virmire. It had been her fault he’d died on those pristine shores. If she’d been faster, if she’d been stronger,  _ better _ , then maybe he could have escaped with the rest of them.

Cerberus had given her all those things. Speed, strength, power. She was barely human anymore, able to push past the barriers of human physiology and mental constraints and to go far beyond the limits of even the most highly-trained Alliance personnel. And sure, she’d gotten what she wanted. The Collectors were destroyed. But at what cost? She’d paid the price in her sanity and her pride and the blood of people who she’d once sworn to protect. She’d given herself almost entirely over to madness, had shed the blood of civilians, of  _ children _ , had beaten prisoners to within an inch of their lives for information, had stepped over those crying for help, ignoring the dying without so much as a shred of guilt. She had extorted and tortured and murdered. It had all felt so inconsequential at the time - all for the greater good. But thinking about it now, when all those innocent bodies lay cold in the ground, Shepard knew it wasn’t. All the guilt she’d avoided came flooding to her at once, like a bottle screwed tight and shaken to bursting. Like rushing water it pulled her under, flooding her lungs and eyes and ears until she could not see, could not speak; all she could do was place her hands over her eyes and cry.

No - there was no good in it at all, great or otherwise. She was a criminal, plain and simple. A terrorist.

Shit. They were right.

“You doing all right?” James Vega’s voice hit her like ice to the back of the neck; Shepard straightened from where she’d slumped against the wall, blinking rapidly to clear her head of the maelstrom of horrific thoughts she’d been treading. James stood outside her cell with his rifle and simple, clean appearance, and Shepard immediately felt her vision tidy a little. She cleared her throat.

“Fine,” she replied shortly. She said nothing else.

 

Her days in the brig were all very much the same. She woke, just as she had done before being locked up, at the beginning of the day cycle. She ate her first meal, then sat with her thoughts. Nobody aside from James Vega was allowed into the cell. Some part of her felt honored that they’d considered her so dangerous they’d isolated her in her own prison, from her  _ own people _ , but she found the silent stressful, even more so as the days wore on. So she spent her hours prowling the perimeter of her cell or mulling over her own rage, fuming at how they’d just bottled her up when the galaxy was on the verge of a mass extinction event. Then she ate her second meal, paced some more, maybe punched a wall or two, and went to sleep. The only respite from all of this was James’s chatter: he talked to himself, or maybe to her, making small-talk to help ease the tension a little bit. He was nervous - not that she blamed him, really. She’d never admit it, or course, but she was thankful for his nonsensical chatter.

Sleep never came easy to her; most nights she didn’t sleep at all. She just lay there staring into the impenetrable darkness of her cell’s ceiling, hazy memories dancing before her eyes. Memories of… what? She could never be entirely sure. Memories of Virmire, of the alleys of Omega, the slums piled high with burning bodies. Memories of the great, spindly Reaper larvae they’d destroyed. But the worst memories came to her the easiest - memories of the pods. How many there’d been…  _ millions _ , surely, all collected together as neatly as the hexagons of a beehive. It had been beautiful, in a way, how they’d glimmered, translucent in the light. But then she’d seen the colonists liquidized and fed to that  _ monstrosity,  _ and all the beauty had died in the wake of terror. Shepard never remembered being that scared in her life; it was nothing but paralysing, ice-cold fear.

Sighing, Shepard pressed her face into her hands. She could feel the heat against her fingers. Her hairline was a mess, not having been tended to since they’d shaved it all off. Her shaved head meant that it never got in the way and she didn’t have to think about tedious things like personal grooming, leaving it to grow out in a forest of thick, dark curls. As far as Shepard was concerned she’d turned into something of a monster: wild and feral and vicious. It didn’t take much to see that. Everything she’d once stood for, everything she’d ever hoped to have been, was lost. All she was now was molten rage and despair. Her regard for personal care and hygiene had been lost along with everything else.

She’d had… some help. Miranda had tried to put a cap on her spiralling mental state, even though she knew she was out of her depth. She’d been frightened when Shepard had lashed out or suffered hallucinations so vivid they turned her to violence - it came to the point where Grunt had to wrestle her to the ground so Miranda could shoot her up with sedatives.

“You see it, right?” Jack had asked. “She’s going crazy. You must have wired her wrong, cheerleader, ‘cause she’s really losing it.”

Miranda, at least, had helped her. She’d been curious about it. About the visions, the things Shepard would hear, the ghosts she’d see wandering the darkened floors of the ship. She would take Shepard back to her cabin when she found her standing, barefoot and in her pyjamas, staring into the vast blackness of the shuttle bay.

Perhaps Jack was right. Maybe it  _ was _ a case of crossed wires. Shepard didn’t know, and in the end, it didn’t matter. As she got closer and closer to the Collectors,the pain and suffering inside her grew more and more unbearable. It was uncontrollable. She funnelled it into anger and violence, much like she had done as a teenager, and while her goal was noble, her methods were… not the best. She saw that now. It made her skin crawl with shame.

And yet, despite all the proof indicating otherwise, she still clung to the hope that there was some humanity left in her - when they’d gone after Vido on Zorya, she’d saved the factory workers. She’d known how important gaining Zaeed’s loyalty was, and yet she’d saved them, the people who played no part in her victory over the Collectors. They didn’t matter, they weren’t necessary, they didn’t benefit her. She’d known they’d slow her down, perhaps even enough to let Vido escape. She’d saved them anyway.

Looking up, Shepard could see the faint reflection in the holding cell’s window. Bulletproof glass, they said - she knew they were lying, daring her to  _ try _ , to give them a reason to put their fists to her. She refused to give them that satisfaction. It wasn’t glass at all, but something much stronger, something that would contain her even if she unleashed the full force of her wrath. It was there so they could watch her. Leer at her. Exposure, the jailors had found, worked a charm on prisoners. Her reflection was thin, emaciated from constant exertion and the added stress of her newfound technological enhancements, and she could see the faint glow of her cybernetics against the darkness. She was still dressed in her Cerberus uniform; she wasn’t allowed to bathe properly, at least so long as she was confined to the brig, but it didn’t bother her. The brig itself had been thrown together in a panic using whatever the Alliance had on hand. It was ugly and small and cramped, but what could she do?

James, on the other hand, found the entire situation rather unsettling, and the more he watched her the more unsettled he became. Especially when he had to watch her sleep, which was a rare occurrence in and of itself. During her waking hours she was silent and sombre, never speaking, never looking at him. It was when she slept that she spoke, murmuring with discontent, tossing and turning. Sometimes she’d shriek or wake herself up by accidentally throwing her head against the wall, or by thrashing so violently she rolled out of bed. James would jerk to his feet, moving forwards as though to help her, but whenever she caught sight of him she’d shuffle back to the very end of the cell and glare at him like a beaten dog. So he’d back off, and she’d climb into bed and resume her ignorance, and he could do nothing more than to pretend not to hear her crying.

Anderson came and checked on her, sometimes. James could tell they were close. He cared about her, and he was the only person she’d speak to. James waited outside the door of the holding cell, hearing only snippets of their conversation, and those slivers of Shepard’s voice that he  _ did  _ hear made him shiver. Shattered. Unnatural.  _ Exhausted _ .

Weeks dragged on. Anderson sent updates, promising Shepard that he would get her back to Earth as soon as he could. They’d meant to be back on Earth weeks ago, but all the bureaucracy involved with Shepard’s translocation and incarceration was making things difficult. Those messages would be followed by days of nothing but radio silence wherein Shepard would scarcely sleep or eat and would sit facing the wall of her cell with her back to him; she was wasting away, the jut of her spine visible against the neckline of her uniform, bone straining white against her skin. Watching her was awful: the way she never moved, never spoke, barely seemed to breathe. As though she was content to sit there and die.

James, meanwhile, had nobody to talk to apart from the rotational guards, and it was making him antsy. No amount of polishing or modding his weapons made it any better. All he could do was watch Shepard suffer. Sure, James tried to make conversation with her, at first. He thought it might make things better. Easier, somehow, for the both of them. It was friendly, and Shepard could probably use a friend or two right now. But his words fell on deaf ears. She never replied to him, never acknowledged him for the most part, and when she did look at him it was never friendly. She bristled, sitting caged like a feral beast.

This wasn’t the Commander Shepard he knew. He’d known as much the moment he’d peered at her through the darkness, the first time he’d heard her voice without the buffer of radio static. Shepard didn’t have a voice he could ignore; it was husky and  _ strong _ , distinct in its tone, and in the pressing silence of the brig it was loud and sharp even through the layers of protective glass. Her smoothly-delivered speeches, her honeyed tone, everything he’d come to think of her was blown to pieces within five minutes. And, now, there was nothing left but raw pity and curiosity. Who the hell was this woman? Who was Commander Shepard,  _ really _ ? Part of him could see her laughing, saying  _ the Alliance? You’d really believe all those carefully put-together vids of me? Rookie mistake. _

Despite this, though, Shepard still managed to keep a regular cycle of activities. Perhaps it was her way of keeping herself sane; if James was agitated by the impenetrable brig then he could only imagine how Shepard felt. All her days were the same, but there was a certain comfort to her routine, an odd sort of familiarity that put James both on edge and at ease, like the constant lull of the sea.

He didn’t know who Shepard was. Nobody did, not anymore. But James had never liked turning down a challenge.


	4. Chapter 4

_ It had been Samara who took down the last of the warhounds. Shepard always loved to see her fight: the hazy blue of her biotics burst from every cell of her body, a lightning flash of force that was more powerful than any other she’d seen. The warhounds had been set upon Shepard’s ground team after they’d left the blasted remains of the Blood Pack base on some nondescript little planet hidden within the outer systems of the Terminus; the planet itself was a wasteland incapable of supporting any form of life and yet had an atmosphere not unlike that of the Citadel, making it a perfect place for a mercenary base. A  _ big  _ mercenary base, as it turned out. Not that it had been any skin off Shepard’s nose - they’d taken out the base and rigged it with explosives in less than two hours, taking the next hour to hunt down deserters and make sure there were no survivors. Shepard’s rifle had been still steaming as she slung it over her back, picking her way out of the base’s ruins and back out into the fog-shrouded air. The mako was parked behind an extrusion of rock, and she waited as Garrus and Samara came to join her. _

_ Garrus’s mandibles fluttered, then, and he stopped, his head cocked to the left. The focus of his visor flickered, tracking the movement of his eye as he scoured the landscape around them, eerily silent after such prolonged gunfire. _

_ “What’s wrong?” Shepard asked over their comms, halting. For a long moment, Garrus didn’t reply. _

_ “Didn’t you hear it?” _

_ As soon as he spoke the air alighted with a terrible rumble; it was a wet, awful sound that Shepard recognised immediately. _

_ “I do now.” _

_ They’d missed a few, apparently. As Garrus and Samara took care of the warhounds, Shepard rounded the back of the building and found a vorcha mercenary lying in a pool of his own blood by the varren pens. He was already missing an arm, bleeding profusely from the shoulder, but he was still alive, each breath coming as a haggard gurgle from between his teeth. Shepard crouched down beside him and looked at the immense agony in his face before dropping a heat sink right between his eyes. _

_ She would have spat at the corpse, too, if she hadn’t been wearing a helmet. _

_ It was only then that she realised the silence. There was an odd note to it, something tense, and Shepard’s hackles were raised instantly. There were some things she could sense in her blood, and this was one of them. She fingered her pistol, drawing it from its holster but keeping it low. _

_ What she found when she emerged back out into the open, however, was the very last thing she’d been expecting. Garrus and Samara stood stock still, hands raised, faced with at least half a dozen Alliance marines. Shepard could see the faint shadow of the shuttles through the fog; they mustn’t have noticed them after leaving the building.  _ Shit.

_ The marines’ guns were loaded and raised. Shepard moved slowly, holstering her pistol as she did so and holding her hands in front of her body. She could have surprised them, knocked a few off their feet and put bullets in the rest, but there was no reason for the Alliance to follow her here. She wanted to know  _ why _. _

_ When the marines saw her, their sights moved from Garrus and Samara to her. She held up her hands, feeling stupid that someone of her unlimited capacity should show such an obvious sign of surrender. It was unlike her, too, to be so cooperative. Garrus sent her a glance from the corner of his eye. But Shepard - well, Shepard had done worse things than shoot up a few marines. Garrus knew, though, that she was hesitant to shoot at her own people, even if they weren’t on her side anymore. _

_ “Stand down!” The bark of a woman’s voice cut through the air. Shepard’s heart jumped violently in her chest and she stared disbelievingly into the fog as yet another marine made their appearance. No, Shepard realised, not a marine: a soldier wearing the colours of an Alliance fighter pilot, emblazoned with officer’s stripes. Captain. When the marines didn’t lower their weapons, the woman turned to them and flourished her pistol. “I said  _ stand down _.” _

_ Hesitantly, the marines lowered their weapons. Garrus and Samara relaxed, then, though they didn’t drop their hands. Neither did Shepard. Her heart hammered against her ribs. _

_ They came face-to-face, did Shepard and the woman. They peered at each other through their helmets, only their eyes visible. Eyes, the same eyes. _

_ “Christ, you look like you’ve aged ten years.” The woman turned to the marines, then. “At ease! And put those damn guns away - the only thing I want any of you shooting are mercenaries, are we clear?” _

_ The marines holstered their weapons. _

_ Shepard held out a hand to Garrus and Samara, who relaxed a little. Only a little. _

_ Then the woman removed her helmet, revealing a creased face and head wrapped in a colourful scarf. _

_ The sound Shepard made then was something between a croak and a sob; it was the remains of failed words.She pulled off her own helmet and Hannah Shepard smiled, her teeth white and perfect and just the same as Shepard’s. _

_ “I could kill you,” Hannah said, and kissed her. _

 

* * *

 

 

_ What must my mother think of me now? _

Captain Hannah Shepard. The name still brought warmth to Shepard’s heart. Despite everything that had happened between them in the almost-forty years Shepard had been alive, she still loved her with all the desperation of a neglected child. She knew her mother cared, somehow. She just wasn’t very good at showing it.

She wondered if her mother knew about her arrest. Undoubtedly she would - Anderson would have told her, though whether or not she chose to ignore it was something Shepard had no way of knowing. It didn’t help that it had been slathered all over every news outlet in the galaxy, either. She hadn’t heard from her - not a single message or call - since they crossed paths in the Terminus all those months ago. Hannah had held her own child at gunpoint, heart breaking with fury at the Cerberus colours her daughter wore after the initial relief wore off. But Shepard, who could have easily blasted her way to freedom, stood there without so much as reaching for her gun.

Hannah Shepard, the only person who had  _ laughed _ at her, who had grinned and smacked some reality back into her.

“Most people I meet end up terrified,” Shepard had said as they stood near the shuttles, just out of earshot of the marines and Shepard’s squad. Shepard’s team and her mother’s Alliance personnel stood apart in an uneasy ceasefire. “Or, y’know. Convinced I’m crazy.”

Hannah sighed and leaned against the side of the shuttle with that same familiar jaunt Shepard hadn’t even realised she’d missed. “Listen, kid, I’ve seen you drenched in your own bodily fluids enough times to pass up on that kind of bullshit. As for crazy - well. We’re all a bit crazy in one way or another.”

It had been Hannah Shepard’s skewed sense of acceptance that had helped throw things back into perspective for Shepard. It reminded her that she still had family out there - loved ones - and that letting her sanity wash completely down the drain probably wasn’t a good idea. It reminded her that she’d been someone, once. Her own person. It was that, coupled with her run-in with Ashley on Horizon, which had hurt the most. Because even though her mother had laughed and kissed her face before leaving, she’d seen the disappointment and the pain behind her eyes.  _ You had so much potential, baby. Shame to see you wasting away like this. _

Shepard let her head fall back into her hands and sighed. She’d given so much up to destroy the Collectors. She’d sacrificed herself for it, even if she still lived to talk about it. Not that anybody would listen. Nobody except Anderson, and  _ maybe  _ her mother. Not that there was any way of knowing, of course - Shepard doubted that Hannah would even get into contact with her. She was a busy woman. One of the Alliance’s best. Shepard had never managed to make a chip in the importance of the Alliance to Hannah Shepard, not even as a child and especially not as an adult. They’d crossed paths in the Terminus only because the Alliance had sent Hannah after her.

Gazing out into the darkness of the brig, Shepard worried her lower lip between her teeth. James had gone to eat and sleep. Shepard’s only company was the surveillance and her thoughts.

For the most part Anderson had phased out of contact, leaving Shepard stranded in her own damn ship without knowing a soul on it. Aside from EDI and Joker, of course, who she wasn’t allowed to speak to either way. All she had was James Vega, a man she didn’t want and didn’t need. Typical. She missed Ashley most of all at times like these, when she felt so completely and utterly alone. It had always been Ashley - she’d had such a knack at sensing what Shepard felt and being able to provide what she needed. Each look and each touch had settled Shepard’s turmoil some way or another. But Ashley hated her, now, so it was useless. That knowledge ate at her, little by little, expanding the rotting emptiness in her chest until she could barely breathe, because of course she’d lose the woman she’d grown to love with such fierce and unending momentum. Of  _ course  _ she would. Typical. She should have expected it, though. Ashley was Alliance through and through, so to even entertain the thought that she’d be receptive to Shepard’s involvement with Cerberus was downright ridiculous. But she’d hoped, how she’d hoped, that maybe Ashley would accept her. Love her again, even. It was a stupid, naive hope.

To be alive and unloved - it was worse than being dead.

* * *

 

It was always a strange feeling to go off rotation. Watching Shepard had become so normal to James, and yet somehow made him bristle every time he was put on the clock, her eyes seeking him out as soon as she heard him coming. She looked at him more often, now, watching him as he watched her. Not that there was much else to do for either of them.

Leaving the brig and heading off to eat was like waking up from a dream; James always felt suddenly cold and nervous, as though he’d crawled out of a tight, warm space, or rolled out of bed. It was a disconcerting feeling, to say the least.

His watch had ended like normal: his omni-tool pinged with the alert, and he’d gotten up and stretched legs made stiff from hours of sitting. He never really wanted to leave Shepard alone, but he was starving, and needed to get out of that cell.

Two other marines were already at the mess, sat at the small table with microwave meals in front of them - he recognised them. Turing and Al-Amin, he recalled, both having joined up with the handover team around the same time he had. When James arrived they seemed to be deep in conversation, though they paused to nod at him as he entered, resuming their talking once he started rifling through the cabinets.

“...heard it was real bad, yeah. Like… frothing at the mouth.”

“That’s crazy.”

Turing’s laugh was too loud for the small kitchen. “Man, I knew things were bad when I heard she joined Cerberus, but you should’ve seen her when we first got here.”

James paused briefly, bristling.

“You were on the initial team, right? What was she like?”

Turing’s voice lowered to a hush that James almost had to strain his ears to hear. He moved quietly, trying not to seem like he was eavesdropping. “You’ve got no idea… she looked nothing like Shepard. I thought she was gonna die, honestly, or like all her skin was gonna flake off. It was a whole different kind of scary… nothing like when she took down Saren.”

Al-Amin hummed thoughtfully around a mouthful of food. “You ever see one of her fits yourself?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. She had a few of ‘em just after the handover. Then again, she was in a real bad way back then.”

The silence was pressing. James’s heart hammered in his chest, and he tried to make enough noise to seem unsuspicious, not that he knew whether or not they even cared if he heard.

“Were they as bad as everyone else says they are?”

Turing looked… uncomfortable. He pushed the food around his plate, chewing over his response for a few moments. “Uh… I dunno. They were pretty bad. The first one happened while she was sleeping, she woke up and started howling like a shot dog. Ain’t never heard a sound like that in my life - it made my skin rise, y’know. Sounded like death.” He paused, frowning at the memory, before shaking his head to rid himself of it. “Another time she started talking to someone… never said a name, so nobody knew who it was, but she kept talking to it. It must’ve been one hell of a hallucination, though, ‘cause she was mighty shook up over it for days afterwards.”

“Freaky,” Al-Amin murmured, and Turing laughed.

“Tell me about it. Nothing quite as unsettling as waking up to someone screamin’ like that.”

Sighing, Al-Amin leaned back, hands behind his head. “Shame Commander Shepard turned out to be a loon.”

“She’s not.” James’s voice had a steely edge to it, and he turned around to face them with stormy eyes and a barely-concealed scowl. “You two got nothing on the Commander.”

That earned a smile from Turing, who spread his hands sympathetically. “C’mon, man, even you have to admit she’s pretty much done for.”

Anger rose along James’s spine, flaring so fierce he wanted to laugh. “Bullshit. She’ll never be over.”

The two marines exchanged glances across the table. Al-Amin bit his lip and Turing’s smile turned into a sneer. “Vega, you need to let go of your puppy crush on her.”

James clenched his teeth. He’d gone years being teased for his admiration of Shepard; it had never bothered him before. But someone discounting her due to circumstances she couldn’t change? That wasn’t something he was willing to stand for.

“Shepard’s one crazy bitch and you know it.” Turing was standing, now, a few inches shorter than James and quite a bit narrower, but his confidence wasn’t lacking. “Nobody could pull the shit she has without being a bit touched in the head. You have a thing for that, Vega?”

Turing had seen the punch coming about as much as James had seen himself throwing it, which is to say: not at all. James had never been one to incite senseless violence, but something inside him had just  _ snapped _ , and before he knew it Al-Amin was throwing himself between them before someone could get their jaw broken.

Turing spat blood when they finally got up. “I’m gonna  _ love  _ seeing Anderson kick you back to Omega where you belong.”

James merely tongued at his split lip. He’d slipped up -  _ fucked up again  _ \- before he’d been able to stop himself. He thought he was better than this. Food forgotten, James shouldered past Turing and headed back to the crew bunks, allowing himself to be swallowed up by the cool, soothing darkness.

He  _ knew  _ he was better than this. Throwing punches over a throwaway comment? That had never been James’s style. He still didn’t know why he’d snapped like that, either - he’d always kept a cap on his anger. Cursing Shepard’s name, James threw himself down onto his bunk, trying to even out his breathing and cool the anger that still burned hot on the back of his tongue. Fucking Shepard. Hell, she wasn’t even the hero James remembered her to be, just a patched-up shell of what she once stood for. She was a mess, even he could see that, bias be damned. Maybe… maybe Turing had been right. After all, Shepard’s career seemed absolutely irredeemable at this point, after everything she’d done.

James closed his eyes. There was always something about  _ Shepard _ . Shepard, who made his blood burn with determination, who’d motivated him ever since she became a Spectre. She meant so much to so many - her glory days still defined her, and she was still talked about by children and Alliance recruits. If only they could see her now.

* * *

 

“You got into a fist fight over  _ that _ ?” Anderson asked over the comms after receiving the incident report. James stood rigid and humiliated in the conference room, grinding his teeth.

“Yes, sir.”

“We need a squad of professional soldiers, Lieutenant, not children!” Anderson jammed his index finger towards him. “Don’t make me regret my decision, Vega.” Anderson’s expression changed, then, and he straightened up, smoothing down the front of his coat. The blue  “Which reminds me. We’ve finally been able to secure Shepard’s return to Earth. She’ll be held at the Vancouver naval base until we can figure out what to do next.”

James shifted his weight a little. “So that means my gig’s up?”

To his surprise, Anderson barked out a laugh. “Absolutely not, Lieutenant. If anything, your recent performance has proved that you need a little more time to think about things before you go back out on the field. You’ll be staying with Shepard on the base as a continuation of your duties.”

“Will the others be coming too, sir?”

“No. It’ll be just you.”

There was a pause between them; Anderson cast his gaze towards the window again, and he put his hands on his hips with a heavy sigh. “You don’t think Shepard’s crazy, do you, Vega?”

He shook his head. “No, sir.”

“What do you  _ really  _ think? Speak freely.”

James froze. He was terrified of saying the wrong thing and he had no idea what the wrong thing even  _ was _ . So he decided to tell the truth. It hadn’t failed him yet. “I think… I think that Cerberus did bad things to her, sir, and I think she’s real sick right now. But I know there’s good still in her.”

“How?”

James shook his head helplessly. “I can just… feel it.”

Anderson spent a few long moments watching him, dark eyes searching James’s face. James refused to so much as flinch.

Eventually Anderson broke the silence with a mirthless chuckle, rubbing at the back of his neck and smiling ruefully. “Something told me I’d made the right call about you, Lieutenant. I’m having the others prepared for transport now. Think you can handle it?”

James snapped a salute; the mere movement of it made him feel better. “Absolutely, sir.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” Anderson rubbed at his chin, then, an amused smile alighting his features. “Does Shepard know about this?”

“Christ, no,” James blurted out; too fast and too loud. The thought of Shepard finding out he’d punched Turing in the jaw in her defence was horrific. He’d never live it down. “Don’t tell her, sir. Please.”

Anderson’s laugh thundered throughout the conference room. “All right, Vega. Just this once.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yikes, long time no see! sorry for the long wait, i've been super busy. anyway!! here's the next chapter, i hope you enjoy it! kudos/comments/bookmarks fuel my life

“We’re heading back to Earth. Finally.”

James tossed his rifle up against the wall and sat heavily in the seat across from Shepard’s cell. She looked up at him, her face ghostly and hallowed - she hadn’t eaten for almost forty-eight hours, James knew, and it was beginning to show - and she blinked, as though she didn’t quite understand.

“Earth?”

James swallowed dryly.  _ She hasn’t slept, either. She looks so tired.  _ “That’s right. Anderson’s finally got clearance.”

Shepard wrestled herself to her feet. Even from where he sat James could see how much effort it took her; the tendons in her arms and her neck stood stark against her skin, shifting like fingers as she moved. Sitting on her bunk, Shepard rubbed a hand over her scalp and her short, choppy hair. Her eyes closed and James couldn’t tell if it was from sorrow or relief.

For the most part Shepard handled the news of her translocation remarkably well. James, though, saw the little shifts in her behaviour that made him realise she wasn’t as all right as she pretended to be. The shadows under her eyes were purple and bruised and stood out shockingly against her skin. She seemed to forget about him entirely, even when he was right there. She thought more often. Slept and ate even less than she used to. She’d pick at her nails as a nervous habit, and James said nothing when her fingers began to bleed from it, because he still wasn’t sure if he should care. Shepard was a criminal, after all. A terrorist. She was his prisoner and the enemy of the Alliance -  _ his  _ enemy - and he shouldn’t care about her. But he did. He couldn’t help it. She was wasting away in front of his eyes and there was jack shit else he could do other than watch.

And yet every time James thought about returning to Earth his skin tingled. The thought of being on solid land again after so many weeks of floating in space was appealing, and even though the memories he had of Earth were hardly sweet, he couldn’t help but perk up at the prospect of returning.

_ There’s nothing left for me there.  _ That’s what he’d told Anderson on Omega, and it was true. There was nothing for James to return to: no home, no life. There was his uncle Emilio, sure, but even then… James had no plans on going back to San Diego. The thought of returning to his homeworld wasn’t entirely bleak, though. Earth could be his fresh start. His new beginning. And if they kept him on with Shepard he’d most likely have his hands too full to even entertain the idea of reclaiming the life he’d left behind. Besides - he was entirely different to how he was when he’d left.

Thinking of his past - his family, his friends, his old life - made him wonder what Shepard had back on Earth. He knew she was a spacer kid. Both her parents were in the Alliance, leaving her an army brat who jumped from station to station in chase of her parents’ deployments. She’d been to Earth, he knew that too, but he had no idea if she harboured any tender memories of it. It would have been insensitive to ask.

“Holding up all right?” he asked her once they’d set course for Earth. When the ship began to move he thought Shepard was going to be sick. Her face, bleak and drawn, peered at him from the other side of the containment field.

“I’m fine.”

A lie. James didn’t dispute it.

At least they were moving again, he thought. There was a comfort to the slight rumble of the ship beneath his feet. The clamour of the crew became something of a lullaby and sleeping was far easier than it had been before.

Shepard, however, wasn’t improving. James watched as the ship’s new Alliance doctor assessed her both mentally and physically, appraising Cerberus’s implants and improvements and documenting each one in painstaking detail. Shepard felt violated and exposed, and the humiliation showed on her face, causing sympathy to lurch deep in James’s gut. Over the course of the last few weeks she’d been scrubbed for information inside and out, leaving her raw and empty, and all she wanted to do was lie down and sleep. But sleep didn’t come easy these days.

Oddly enough, having James with her made her feel a little better. He was a constant in an ever-changing world, the only thing that refused to spin out of control. Shepard didn’t like it. Shepard didn’t like  _ him _ . He was too friendly, too genuine, too ordinary. She wasn’t used to ordinary or genuine, and especially not friendly. Everything about him put her on edge. Even when they’d met, the way he looked at her feel like he  _ knew  _ her, that she was more than just a name or some legendary tale, and it made her nervous.

The trip was shorter than they anticipated. It was merely a matter of jumping through a few mass relays and then making course straight to Earth, and after weeks of floating around in space it felt like a snap second. Three days after setting course to Earth they were bundled into a shuttle and taken down planetside; the sight of the city approaching made James’s chest swell with relief, though it made Shepard sick, and she kept her eyes shut for the most part of the journey, as though the mere sight of Earth was too much for her to bear. James sat across from her in the shuttle and the bright white light slanting through the windows changed her - he’d only seen her concealed in the half-darkness of the  _ Normandy’s  _ brig, and so to see her so brightly illuminated was as shocking as it was awful. Like death had her in its grasp already.

Anderson met them at the landing pad. His presence was one of Shepard’s only respites, and his grip on her upper arm let her breathe again. Shepard had been allowed only the shackles around her wrists, parted and worn like gleaming black bracelets, a little red light against the inside of her wrist indicating that they were fully charged with enough energy to bring down a krogan. Even Shepard couldn’t tear her way through a naval base full of soldiers and she was, thankfully, wise enough to realise that. Anderson showed them to the residential blocks, leading Shepard and James to a studio apartment with windows overlooking the main plaza.

Everything passed Shepard in a haze. Her vision was blurred and sluggish, all colours fading together into a sickening disaster of reality. She clung to the tightness of Anderson’s grip on her arm and tried her best to ignore the faces that watched her pass; they were ghastly, those faces, dark shadows that spoke of her shame and disgrace. James and Anderson - she had to remind herself that they were there. She drew strength from the knowledge that even though the rest of the galaxy was against her, she wasn’t completely abandoned.

“This is home for now,” Anderson told them after leading them to their designated lodgings. Only once they were inside did he let go of Shepard, who had to lean against the wall just to stay on her feet. “You two are gonna have to bunk in together for a while until Shepard’s trial.”

“ _ Trial _ ?” Shepard bit out, clenching her fists. “What trial?”

“Did you forget that you just destroyed a star system and killed almost half a million batarians? You’ll be going up before the Defence Committee to stand trial for everything you’ve done since joining Cerberus, as well,” Anderson told her. He looked exhausted and concerned. He’d already told her that she’d be trialled, though whether it was her brain playing tricks or she’d merely forgotten, he couldn’t be sure. “I can’t tell you how things are going to go, Shepard. You’re going to have to be on your best behaviour if you don’t want to be locked up for the rest of your life. Every single batarian leader wants to see your blood spilled.”

Shepard shuddered at the thought. Her skin burned with outrage at the injustice of it all, but she knew better than to lash out, especially considering she was still wearing the cuffs. But justice… perhaps she didn’t deserve it, not really. “Fine,” she gritted out, the muscles in her jaw jumping and making her scars flicker. “At least let me use the gym in the meantime before I kill somebody.”

“Bad joke.” Anderson gave her shoulder a squeeze all the same, then brought up his omni-tool to alter the settings of Shepard’s cuffs. “All right, here’s how this is going to work: your cuffs will be on low while you’re in here. That means you’ll be allowed a wide range of movement and can use your tech abilities to a minimum - not that I’m sure why you  _ would _ \- without any feedback. Outside that door you need to be careful or else you’ll get your nerves fried, which is never fun. Trust me, I’ve seen these things in action before. I’ll adjust the settings to let you work in the gym.”

“Mom always said she should’ve put a leash on me. Guess you beat her to it,” Shepard said dryly, and Anderson smirked.

“Your mother’s never been wrong before.” He looked up to James, then. “Lieutenant, your job is the same as before. Make sure Shepard looks after herself and keep her in line. If anything seems off, tell somebody. Remember: you are her supervisor. This room is monitored at all times, by the way, so no funny business.” The last part was directed back at Shepard, who rolled her eyes. “And that’s it. I’ll be back in a few days with the date of your trial.”

James saluted as Anderson left, letting the doors slide close and the silence press in close around them. He let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding from the moment he’d stepped foot on the  _ Normandy _ . “Well. We’re back on Earth. That’s something.”

Shepard had wandered over to the windows, leaning forwards to look out over the plaza, not replying.

The studio was small yet still seemed cavernous compared to what Shepard and James were used to. It had a kitchen and dining area, as well as a living area (with a television, James realised, swallowing a sob of happiness), and a sleeping area divided off from the rest by a partition. There were two single beds separated by a dresser; the whole place was plain, obviously designed to be designated to new recruits, but it was luxury to them after what they’d had on the  _ Normandy _ . Shepard spent a few minutes exploring. James chose instead to wait by the door.

“I suppose I should thank you,” she said without turning to face him. She disappeared behind the partition and James heard the dresser drawers sliding in and out alongside the shuffle of clothing. She was changing out of her jumpsuit. “I’m pretty sure you punching Turing got us here faster.”

James flushed, glad she was hidden by the partition so she couldn’t see it. How had she found out about that…?  _ Don’t be surprised,  _ he told himself. Shepard had a way of knowing things. “Personal disagreement,” he said gruffly.

Shepard stepped out from behind the partition wearing a plain black t-shirt and sweats, her feet bare, hands on her hips. Seeing Shepard dressed casually was… odd. James had only ever seen her in uniform.

“You’re staring again.”

“H-huh?” James stood at attention and tried not to look sheepish at being caught. Shepard was looking at him, now, her expression unreadable, a trace of red chasing the strong line of her jaw. He saw a glimmer of the hero he’d once known in her as she stood haloed in the bright afternoon light.

She crossed the studio in a few long strides, and before he knew it she was at his side, hand on the door. “I’m gonna go punch the shit out of something and you’re going to come with me.”

For a startled moment James thought she was going to go and pick a fight; it only took a second for him to realise that she meant she was going to hit the gym, and he had to admit that the opportunity to exercise properly was very appealing. Shepard gave him enough time to change before they picked their way down to the gym, which was - thankfully - almost completely empty at that time of day. James hadn’t been in this much open space for months - he almost felt a little light-headed.

Shepard headed over to the punching bag, stretching out her long limbs and taping her knuckles before she got hooked in like a woman possessed, throwing punch after punch after punch in quick, violent succession. James took himself over to the pull-up bar; it was far enough away for him to be out of her personal space, but close enough for him to keep an eye on her, and pull-ups had always been his favourite.

Exercise was good for Shepard, he decided. Gave her a way to work out all that energy she’d bottled up in the brig. The shift from a high-security prison to the openness of the naval base was disorienting, but it took less than an hour in the gym for James to fall into rhythm again. This was where be belonged: in the Alliance, around his fellow soldiers, doing pull-ups like a good marine should. It got his blood pumping and cleared his head better than anything else in the world.

James was used to spending hours at the gym. He was the kind of guy who spent at least an hour working out every day - hell, most people could tell that much just by looking at him. He was  _ built  _ like someone who worked out every day and was damned proud of it. Shepard, on the other hand, was fit through battle experience; he glanced over at her every so often and caught glimpses of split skin or old scars or fresh wounds that had only just healed over. The longer he watched her the more amazed he was at her sheer physical aptitude. He’d never seen someone work so hard for so long before, from laying into a punching bag to doing chin-ups to sprinting up an incline on the treadmill. She worked and worked and worked until she was drenched with sweat, blinking it out of her eyes and licking it from her lips, focussed on nothing but the feeling of the blood racing through her veins and the burn in her muscles.

After two hours James set about stretching, trying to work out the knots and kinks from time spent on the  _ Normandy _ . Part of him knew he ought to be thrilled at the prospect of being on board one of the best ships in the Alliance fleet, but in reality it had merely been weeks of stale darkness and second-hand misery. He kept Shepard in his sights, careful to make sure she didn’t do anything that could set off the cuffs, and even after he finished stretching and merely sat on the bench waiting for her to finish, she didn’t stop.

At two and a half hours, he began to worry.

_ Nobody  _ had this kind of physical endurance. Nobody. Shepard may have been a cybernetically-enhanced super soldier, but she was still human, and her body still had limits, no matter what sort of tech Cerberus had crammed inside her. He chewed the inside of his cheek, unsure what to do.

“You might want to take it easy,” he said, approaching her where she’d taken command of the pull-up bar. Muscles shifted beneath her shirt as she drew herself up. “Don’t want to overwork yourself and be stuck in bed for a week, no?”

With a grunt, Shepard dropped from the bar. She was sweating profusely, breathing hard, and James could practically  _ feel  _ how her heart galloped beneath her ribs. She fixed him with a cold glare. “I can take care of myself.”

“Shepard -,”

James reached out as Shepard made to stalk away, grabbing her wrist. The touch was electric; Shepard wrenched herself from his grip as though he’d shocked her, fingers rigid, eyes wide and hostile.

After a short and impossibly tense second, she looked away, murmuring, “I’ll cool down, then we’ll go.”

Good enough.

James’s hand burned from where he’d touched her. Like he’d dipped his hand into molten magma. He didn’t know if the burn was physical or psychological, but whatever it was, it didn’t go away until well after they’d cleaned up and headed back to the studio.

Shepard spent those first few days sprawled out on the floor of the living area, eyes closed, playing music that was hundreds of years old. James had never found the appeal in that sort of music, but if it brought her some peace, then he wasn’t going to complain. He’d never expected her to be into that sort of thing, either. But Shepard, he learned, never failed to surprise.

 

The two of them settled into a rhythm. It was comfortable. Routine had always made James feel like he was in control, and now was no exception; he finally felt like he’d gotten a handle back on his life. Having Shepard so close was no longer terrifying. It wasn’t natural, but it was a whole lot less weird than it had been before. It took him a few days to stop being thrown off guard by waking up to the sight of her across their small sleeping space, or to stop being startled when she began to play that music of hers at three o’clock in the morning. Shepard did a whole bunch of weird shit, but in time James grew used to all of it, to the point where  _ normal  _ itself seemed extraordinary.

The trial loomed over them. Anderson hadn’t given them a date as of yet, though he told Shepard to keep on her best behaviour while inside the base. Shepard was always quiet after their calls.

“Seems like you and Anderson have known each other for a while,” James said to her, and she looked up from where she sat on the floor, rubbing a hand across her mouth.

“You could say that.”

Shepard, James learned, was cryptic. Impossible to unlock. She said one thing and did another, gave her words backwards meanings and double entendres that left James unable to tell what she meant whenever she spoke. She revealed nothing. She didn’t trust him. She resented his presence, resented his existence, and to have his Alliance hero reject him so openly was a real cut to his ego. James tried not to let it shake him up too much. Shepard was fractured, he reminded himself. She needed time to heal.

Within the first week Shepard seemed to grow accustomed to him being with her at all hours of the day. She developed a habit of twisting the cuffs around her wrists, but she was no longer afraid of them, and they became little more than another annoyance.

There were things about this arrangement she would never admit to. Being back on Alliance ground made guilt punch up through her lungs, but it was also comforting, a reminder of  _ home _ ; she’d spent some of the happiest years of her life on Alliance turf. She tried not to remember them.

It was calming to have somebody else living with her, too. She’d always rather liked the crowdedness of crew cabins, and even the CO’s cabin on the  _ Normandy  _ wasn’t completely private. Having James Vega living with her was as comforting as it was disconcerting, and that comfort made her nervous. Angry. She should  _ hate  _ this man, her jailor, and she should hate the way she’d catch him flexing in front of the bathroom mirror or humming as he flipped pancakes; but she couldn’t. Because he’d stand there in the early-morning sun frying eggs and he’d offer her coffee made from actual ground beans rather than tinned instant formula, and he reminded her of the carefree young men she’d signed on with back when she was in her twenties. Everything about James Vega felt like a good memory to her.

She hated it.

So she was rude to him. Hostile. Angry, yes, but she was always angry. She yelled at him, scowled at him, ignored him. And yet he always received her with a shrug, sometimes a smirk. The smirk was recent and it infuriated her. He made her mad because she was  _ interested  _ in him; he brought out her humanly curiosity in others, her sociableness, something she’d shut down a long time ago. She wanted to know his story, how he’d ended up here, what that bar fight was about in the first place. She didn’t even know if he’d tell her. She didn’t bother asking.

_ I just need to get out of here, _ she thought, twisting the cuffs round her wrists in agitation.  _ Get out of here and… do something.  _ She didn’t know what. Not yet. But something had to be done about the Reapers, whether it was through the Alliance or not. She briefly considered Jack’s offer to go pirate, but figured it was probably a bad idea in the long-run. Still - the thought made her chuckle. God, she missed them.

At night she listened to James breathe. Surprisingly, James didn’t snore, something she’d expected of him for some reason. His breaths were deep and even as he slept, and he had a habit of murmuring in his sleep, snuffling whenever he rolled over. Shepard lay awake for hours just listening to the sound of him sleeping. It almost -  _ almost _ \- put her to sleep herself. But nothing was quite that easy.

James, too, was more aware of Shepard than usual during the night. There was little more than four feet between their beds; the rare nights she slept she did so restlessly, muttering and making low, whining moans that often escalated to hyperventilation. Most times she managed to wake up before she managed to bash her head against something, though James had moved the dresser just in case. Some nights it sounded like she was in agony, reminiscent of the torture tapes James had heard during his training years, and he began to understand what Turing had meant about her cries sounding like death. There was something ghostly about them, a window to grief so deep it transcended all emotion. He didn’t want to know what she was dreaming about.

It was times like those where he’d wake to the sound of her crying, trapped in a dream and unable to escape; he still dreamed about Fehl Prime, sometimes, and knew what it was like to be stranded in limbo surrounded by horrific memories. So he kicked off his covers and crossed the small space, touching his hand to Shepard’s shoulder or whispering her name to try and wake her.

She’d punched him the first time he’d done that.

He lay dazed on the floor, staring up at her, hand on his jaw where her fist had sent him stumbling back. She, in turn, sat drenched in sweat and in just as much shock as he was.

“I’m… sorry.” The words were so hoarse James almost didn’t understand them. He got to his feet, rubbing his jaw.

“No harm no foul,” he replied, his own voice husky with sleep. “Sounded like you were having a bad time.”

Shepard grimaced, and he knew he’d been right.

After he crawled back into bed and Shepard had rolled over to face the wall, he heard her speak again.

“Thanks.”


	6. Chapter 6

“The trial is in one week.”

Shepard looked up, alarmed, shaking the hair back from her face. It had grown out considerably since her arrest, dark and falling in haphazard curls over her forehead. “How much of a chance do I have?”

Anderson shook his head, sighing. He always seemed to be doing that these days. “I have no idea. The Committee won’t tell me anything. We’re doing what we can, Shepard, but I don’t know if it’ll be enough.”

They were sat around the studio’s small table late in the afternoon. The sun streamed in through the blinds, warming the room and making Shepard’s skin glow golden, and yet the atmosphere was sombre. Nobody spoke. Nobody met each other’s gazes.

“That makes no sense,” James murmured, unsure whether he had leave to speak freely or not. He decided he’d do it anyway. Things like this had to be said. “The best damn soldier the Alliance has seen in years and they wanna lock you up…” It was an afterthought, almost, the way he said it as though he was talking to himself. He shook his head and sighed.

Anderson, however, looked intrigued. “Shepard has been quite rude to you, apparently, Lieutenant. And yet you still say that.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, Shepard fought when everybody else was fine just sitting around - she brought down Saren, brought down the Collectors, and she’s the only person who ever seems to be doing any damn work around here.” He couldn’t help the inflection of annoyance in his voice; the more he thought about how Shepard had been treated by the brass and the Council, the angrier he got. “I… I think Shepard’s real broken up. She’s been through a lot of shit, seen stuff other people couldn’t even dream of. So, yeah, she’s rude as hell most of the time, but it’s okay, because in the end what she’s gone through probably hurts a whole lot more than my feelings do.”

Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Shepard’s shocked expression, surprised that someone would stand up for her like that - least of all James Vega. Was he taking the piss out of her…? No, the stormy frown he wore was far too genuine. James wasn’t the type to joke about these things, either.

Shepard smiled - a small, tentative thing - for the briefest of moments before her face fell flat again.

“I agree.” Anderson looked between the two soldiers, eyes narrowed. “Shepard, you’ll have to scrub up. Get that hair cut and try and sleep off those bags under your eyes. Also…” he paused, uncomfortable.

“Can’t fix the scars, sir,” Shepard supplied. Anderson shrugged.

“Your one saving grace is that you did the things the Alliance was too afraid to do. Things that needed to be done. We’ll be all right, Shepard. I promise.”

Promises didn’t mean much, these days.

Once Anderson left James set about clearing away the stone-cold coffee, and by the time he was finished Shepard was still standing by the door. “You good, Shepard?”

She looked up. Met his eyes. She looked… shy? Bashful? It was an unfamiliar expression, one that softened the severeness of her face a little. James nearly didn’t hear her voice from across the room.

“What you said before… it means a lot.”

Whiplash. Again.

“It’s true,” James urged. “You’re the only one who gives a shit and they have the balls to treat you like this.” His fists curled at his sides, anger once again pooling at the base of his spine. “I wish I could just…”

“Just what?”

“Make you… not be here.”

To his surprise, Shepard laughed.  _ Actually  _ laughed, not just that cold, mirthless chuckle he’d heard so many times before, but a genuine sound of amusement. The smile she wore was so foreign that it made her face seem distorted. She almost looked… handsome, or at least more like her old self. All he could do was blink at her.

“I appreciate that, for what it’s worth,” she said, and with that she turned, and the conversation was over.

 

James couldn’t stop thinking of that smile and, namely, how to put it back on her face again.

Some people called him stupid, others just called him simple, but the truth was that if James found a way to make a sad person smile, he’d do it as often as he could. And Shepard? She was sad. Possibly one of the saddest people James knew. It was easy to be blinded by the sheer anger she harboured, sure, but James had spent weeks doing little else other than watching her, and he knew sadness when he saw it.

But he didn’t know how to do it. Not with her.

When people listed off her achievements and congratulated her for it, she grew furious, and closed in on herself completely, shutting herself off to any outside contact. In fact, whatever James had said that made her smile could very well earn him a punch in the jaw, as well, and he wasn’t ready to risk the fragile rapport he’d built up with Shepard. Her moods were as temperamental as the weather.

He knew now that Shepard wasn’t a terrorist. She did what had to be done and was the one who made all the hard decisions along the way: she’d sacrificed almost half a million batarians to buy all galactic life a little more time, she’d gone rogue and suffered monumental psychological damage to bring down the Collectors. She had hundreds of thousands of deaths on her shoulders and she bore them all in silence and without flinching. She did not wage war out of the corruption of her own heart.

Surely the Committee would see that. But, he thought glumly, they were politicians. More concerned with words and reputations than with actions and results. Shepard’s fate hung in limbo, shrouded with uncertainty, and it made him uneasy.

The trial drew closer and closer and Shepard grew more and more nervous. James kept his distance, avoiding Shepard’s irritation as best he could, though the closer the date got the less and less she slept; he’d find her sitting in the living area at dawn, the shadows beneath her eyes so dark that he knew immediately that she hadn’t slept a wink.

“Let me cut your hair,” he said the night before the trial. Shepard looked up from where she’d been reading some old poetry volume, frowning in confusion. “Anderson said you needed a haircut,” he went on, making scissoring motions with his fingers. “I used to cut my cousins’ hair all the time, you can trust me.”

For some reason, she did. Despite her hesitation and narrow-eyed glower, she did.

She let him sit her down in a kitchen chair, let him throw a towel around her shoulders and tuck it into the collar of her shirt, aware of how rough his fingers were against her neck, how he didn’t bat an eyelid at the titanium spinal supports set deep into her skin. He brought out scissors, sharpening them with the whetstone he’d found in a kitchen drawer, stepping around her as carefully as one would step around a wild animal. Shepard watched him warily, sitting tense and with her heart beating faster than it should’ve been.

“Lean back just a little,” he said, and she did, allowing him to guide her chin towards the ceiling with his thumb, the tips of his fingers pressed to her throat.

She exhaled to try and calm her nerves. Letting someone so close to such a vulnerable point of her body was  _ not  _ something she usually did, though she’d never admit that it made her afraid. Her throat bobbed against his fingers, eyelashes fluttering, and James swallowed hard. This was the first time she’d let him touch him. He’d never been this close to Shepard - hell, he’d never even come close to this level of intimacy with  _ any  _ woman for a good few years. He knew he couldn’t let himself be distracted - cutting off Commander Shepard’s ear was  _ not  _ a good way to go.

Shepard sat perfectly still as he wet her hair. It was soft beneath his fingers, perhaps a little greasy, and he saw the shimmer of grey at her temples. He massaged his fingers against her scalp and she  _ sighed _ , her stiff shoulders finally loosening a little, and he couldn’t help pressing his thumbs to the base of her skull, making a tiny moan bubble in Shepard’s throat. Her eyes closed and her head leaned back further until her scalp touched against his stomach.

The haircut itself was quick. Shepard’s hair wasn’t long nor was it particularly difficult to deal with - certainly not as difficult as his cousins’ thick, curly hair had been - and all she needed was a decent trim and shaping. It was easy enough to do with kitchen scissors. He took his time brushing her hair out, though, more for her enjoyment than anything. When was the last time Shepard had been even remotely pampered? Probably never, James thought. After everything she’d been through, he could afford her this much.

Surprisingly she didn’t complain. She didn’t sit up, didn’t tell him to hurry up, didn’t push his hands out of her hair. She just sat there with her eyes closed and head tilted back, sighing every now and again when James’s fingers pressed against her in just the right way.

“There,” he said, finally, wiping the scissors clean on the towel around Shepard’s neck. “All done.”

Shepard opened her eyes like she was waking from a doze. She blinked, looking around and catching James’s eyes from above, surprised as though she’d expected him to slit her throat. They held each other’s gazes for a moment before Shepard finally straightened up, giving her head a good shake before letting James remove the towel.

“Go have a look in the mirror,” he told her. “Tell me what you think.”

It was perhaps the first time she’d ever done what he’d told her to without question.

“You’re full of surprises,” she called from the bathroom where she was leaning over the sink and inspecting his handiwork. “I look at least five years younger.”

James laughed.

* * *

 

_ How’d you land yourself in this, Jane? _

Shepard knew, immediately, that she was dreaming.

She always knew she was dreaming, but it never made any difference. The colours were still as bright, the sounds still as loud, the pain still as sharp. She could never wake herself up from them; even her eyes refused to close and block it all out.

Maize stretched endlessly from horizon to horizon. She could see nothing else, the gold stalks breaking only to give rise to a low hill, at the crest of which stood a sprawling tree. A swing was roped to one of its boughs and swung, slightly, in the wind. She always found herself here. So often, in fact, that she had long ago come to believe that every dream she’d ever had was stored somewhere within the maize, hidden away to be pulled out like tapes and played. She was sure it must be a stage upon which every trifling dream was acted. The wind whispered about her, making the stalks sway and ripple like the sea.

And then she saw his face - high, fine features and eyes blue as the sea. The perfect American Dream, a memory, hazy from the years they’d put between them, made in the flesh. Her gut lurched and her eyes swam and she tried her hardest to look away, but she couldn’t, she always couldn’t.

Most of the time he merely stood there, watching her, across the endless sea of whispering wheat. It was always like this, the dream where fragments of her past would dance just beyond her reach, reminding her of the things she’d lost. Always there, in that field, beneath the grey sky.

She called his name. He didn’t answer.

“Please,” she whispered, beginning to wade through the stalks that bit and prickled at her legs like many small teeth. She felt naked, vulnerable. “Please -,”

The gunshot rang out so loudly Shepard was left with a ringing in her ears. Pain exploded through her chest, right over her heart, the gun still hot where he held it in his hand. Through burning eyes she watched as his skin melted from the bone, as his eyeballs rolled down his dripping cheeks, as his hair came away in chunks and his scalp melted from his skull. She watched as his bones turned to dust, weeping, screaming, consumed by pain so intense she could hear it; the deep, booming roar exploded up from the sky and she howled in anguish, forced to relive the horror over and over and over. It was always like this, always the same -

And then, as if she was being dragged from deep underwater, she woke.

Something was holding her down. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, and yet her muscles contracted and spasmed and she fought back against her restraints as hard as she could.

“ _ Dios _ , Shepard! It’s just me!”

The voice was hazy, like white noise in her ears, but she recognised it. It was close, breath against her cheek, and she pulled in each lungful of air with an explosive gasp. Hands grasped tightly at her shoulders and her skin was slick with cold sweat, sheets drenched in it.

“Shepard!”

Vega. It was Vega’s voice.

Wakefulness hit Shepard like a brick wall. She was here, in her bed, in Vancouver. She wasn’t shot and wasn’t dying and there was no whispering maize, only silence and a faint ringing in her ears. Her breathing slowed and she stopped struggling, letting her weight sink back down onto the mattress, though her hands remain fisted in the front of James’s shirt. His face was barely visible in the darkness - what time was it, anyway? - but his eyes gleamed, the high line of his cheekbones catching the half-moon light that speared through the window.

He looked terrified.

The fingers twisted in his shirt loosened and Shepard fell back against her pillow, her breathing still rapid, and she rubbed her hands over her face to try and rid herself of the last lingering effects of the dream. “...sorry.”

“Hey, don’t apologise.” James’s voice was soft, comforting, and a deep shiver worked its way up through Shepard’s gut. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, now,” she assured him, unable to make herself sound angry. She was just glad he managed to wake her before things got unbearable. “I, ah… thank you.”

James’s teeth flashed bright as he smiled. “No problem. You worried about the trial?”

Oh. Right. The trial.

“The…? Oh. Yeah, I… I guess.” Even she couldn’t understand what she was saying. Her voice refused to put one word in front of the other.

James gave her shoulders a squeeze before taking his hands away. “I can turn on the lights if you want,” he told her, but she shook her head.

“No, I’m… I’m okay. I just need to lie here for a bit.”

His eyes still glimmered as he nodded, rising from where he’d knelt by her bed and crossing the small space to get back into his own. “All right, but if you need anything, I’m just here.”

“Right.”

Her tone was clipped. Short. Uninviting of further conversation. And even so, it made James’s chest settle, comfort seeping its way through his body. He’d obviously pulled her out of the same dream she’d been having the last few nights - she kept pleading in a low, torturous whine, and each time he woke to it, his skin began to crawl.

James thought back to what Turing had said on the  _ Normandy _ . When he’d described being present for Shepard’s… fits. Is that what they were calling them? Fits? James glanced at the line of her back through the darkness and grimaced to himself. He was curious, sure, but he was also afraid. The Shepard he’d come to know kept what emotion she could bottled up so tightly inside  _ nobody  _ could get to it - not Anderson, not the Alliance shrinks, not James. The only thing she ever seemed to show was anger and hatred and violence.

If the reports were true, then, that meant she’d been even worse when she was with Cerberus, when her anger was unhinged and she could do whatever she wanted to get the information she needed. Unlike the Alliance, Cerberus didn’t seem to have any moral standards. It would’ve been a festering environment for her anger; letting it stagnate, ferment, until it consumed her.

Whatever happened in Cerberus was wrapped up far too tightly in red tape for James to get wind of. Sure, she’d destroyed the Collector base, but at what cost? What had Cerberus done to her when they’d found her floating in space? He already knew they’d patched her up with alloys and cybernetics, but somehow he knew it was only the tip of the iceberg. The Shepard who’d gone into Cerberus and the Shepard who’d come out were two entirely different people.

He thought of Shepard when she woke; each breath was dredged through her lungs like breathing was the most difficult thing in the world, and the moment he had placed his hands on her bare skin she’d let out the most ghastly of sounds, the beginning of a scream that hadn’t quite managed to form. She’d… struggled. Hard. Her muscles had danced and quivered beneath his hands like they had a life of their own, and when her eyes finally opened they were  _ terrified _ , full of grief and anger and despair. Restlessly, James rolled onto his side, facing the wall so he couldn’t see her anymore. The clock on the dresser told him it was a little after three in the morning - the trial was in seven hours and he knew he ought to catch whatever sleep he could.

* * *

 

Perhaps all Shepard’s strange dreams were rubbing off on him. It wasn’t often James knew he was dreaming, however, though this wasn’t like his normal dream sequences; it was only a series of hazy images, of distant sounds and the pervasive rumble of thunder. The sight of her thin, bent body - naked and scarred, curled in on itself and marred with gleaming titanium and jutting bone - flickering in and out of his consciousness. It was uncomfortable. He tried to shock himself into wakefulness, but he only managed to swim just beneath the surface, unable to break through. When he finally woke to the heralding shriek of his bedside alarm, all he did was sigh in relief and pass a sweaty hand over his face.

Shepard was not in her bed.

James found her already awake and doing chin-ups on the doorframe, still in the loose shirt and pants she slept in, the fabric riding up over her belly and revealing a long, glowing fissure running from her navel down beneath the waistband of her pants. She dropped down when she noticed him, though, wiping her hands on her thighs.

He made her breakfast like he usually did - he was good at it, and quick, too, just like his abuela had taught him, and it helped keep his hands busy and to work out some of the nerves. Why the hell was  _ he  _ nervous? It wasn’t even his trial. As he served up the eggs he’d made onto their plates he hazarded a glance over his shoulder at Shepard, who was sitting at the little kitchen table with her head in her hands.

“If they lock me up,” she said to him as he sat down, “I need you to do me a favour.”

“What kind of favour?”

“Shoot me.”

James bit back a laugh. Of course she’d say something like that. “Anderson would cut my balls off if I did that. Who knows - maybe that chick with the wild tattoos could come rescue you and you could become the pirate queens of the galaxy.”

At the mention of Jack Shepard smiled into her food, spinning the fork between her fingers and pushing it around the plate. She still wasn’t eating properly; she’d finish half a meal most of the time, and that was on a good day.

“You’ll feel better if you eat something.”

“I won’t.”

He didn’t push it.

Both of them wanted to head down to the gym, but mid-morning was usually a bad time to do it, especially on a weekend when the place was crawling with Alliance soldiers with too much time on their hands. If there was anywhere Shepard would get roused on or provoked, it would be in the gym, where marines with absurdly inflated egos liked to spend their hours out-lifting each other. James knew. He’d been one of them, once. So, instead, Shepard resumed her chin-ups in the doorframe and James set about tidying the place up for when Anderson arrived to escort them to the Committee meeting.

“I feel ridiculous,” Shepard murmured after changing into her dress blues, smoothing down the front of her coat and fiddling with the sleeves. The hair was pushed back from her face, for once, combed out and tucked neatly behind her ears, a tendril or two escaping to curl across her forehead. James almost didn’t recognise her when she walked out of the bedroom; for a moment the Commander Shepard he’d looked up to stood before him in all her glory. The illusion shattered as soon as she turned her head, though, revealing the deep shadows beneath her eyes and the unmistakable gleam of her scars.

“You and me both,” James said, gesturing down at his own attire. Shepard looked at him, and for a moment he thought she was going to laugh.

Anderson showed up shortly afterwards in a flurry of angry muttering and lapel-adjusting. “Let’s get this over with,” he grumbled, fixing Shepard’s collar and looking her over with a satisfied nod. “You’ll do. Come on, now, we can’t be late for this.”

James and Shepard followed in silence; they’d let him carry a pistol beneath his coat, just in case, and his fingers itched to touch it as reassurance. The lingering gazes that bore into them as they passed the corridors full of gawking onlookers didn’t help, either, and each time James glanced in Shepard’s direction he saw how tense all the attention was making her.

He reached out, squeezed her elbow. Shepard closed her eyes.

When they arrived outside the meeting room, Anderson turned to Shepard and held her by the shoulders. “Jane,” he said to her. “I know you’re scared.”

“I’m not -,”

“It’s going to be okay. You hear me? They’re going to try and provoke you, but you can’t let them.” He touched his hand to her cheek, and Shepard nodded.

With that, Anderson pushed the doors open.

The Committee room was enormous: it was long and had a high ceiling crested with massive windows overlooking the Vancouver cityscape. A stand had been erected in the middle, upon which Shepard was directed, and she went along with surprisingly little struggle, shoulders tensed at being the very centre of attention.

The room was crowded with Alliance officials and administrative staff, though James was relieved to see that the press hadn’t been granted entrance. That was the  _ last  _ thing Shepard needed right now. He stood with Anderson behind Shepard’s stand, the glare of the late-morning sun making the distant city glow.

“Jane Shepard.” One of the Committee members was standing, her face stern, voice even. It commanded the room to silence, and immediately the soft murmurs fell away. “You have been brought before the Defence Committee to answer for atrocities committed against the batarian hegemony, as well as for working with Cerberus, a known terrorist organisation.”

Shepard ground her teeth.

Within the next hour the evidence was laid forth of Shepard’s involvement with Cerberus and the destruction of the Bahak system. As far as her work with Cerberus was concerned, there were snippets of surveillance footage, witnesses of her crimes, reports and documents and receipts, bits and pieces that fell just short of providing concrete proof. They framed Shepard as a ghost, as someone who may or may not have been responsible for the actions committed in Cerberus’s name, but as the sun inched farther into the sky, the evidence heaped higher and higher; Shepard’s recklessness bore her wide open to the intelligence agencies, and she could feel the pinch of each nail being hammered into her coffin.

And then came the testimony of Ashley Williams.

The audio log had been recorded at an Alliance base on Horizon after Ashley was approached by intelligence officers in the wake of a Collector attack on the colony. There were few survivors, yet the few that were left were still more than any Collector attack had left behind before. They had information the Alliance wanted. At the announcement of the testimony tape, however, Shepard’s face drained of blood, despite her concrete steadfastness in the face of every other scrap of proof against her, and she closed her eyes for the briefest of moments as grief rose in her throat. A clerk loaded the tape, and feedback crackled through the room until the audio focussed in on the cut section.

“Testimony of Ashley Madeleine Williams, Horizon.” It was a male’s voice, cold and detached. Shepard’s heart thundered in her throat. He said the date, the time, and then a series of numbers. There was a jump of static before the audio focussed again.

“I encountered Commander Shepard on Horizon during the Collector raid.” That was it - Ashley’s voice. A shiver crawled up through Shepard’s chest at the sound of it. “She… I saw her. It was her, it  _ was _ .” Ashley’s voice crackled out over the audience, notably strained, almost distressed; it sounded as though she was pacing, her voice fading in and out. There was the sound of shuffling, and then silence. “It was Shepard. She was with two others, two women I’ve never seen before, but… it was her. I’d recognise her anywhere. She looked so  _ different _ , but I know I wasn’t mistaken. She’s working with Cerberus, I… I don’t know what she wants, or where she’s based, but she had the Cerberus insignia stamped on her armour and she was wearing their colours. She wants something to do with the Collectors… they took  _ everyone _ …”

The tape wound to an end. Tears burned in Shepard’s eyes and she worked her jaw to stop her expression from crumpling. She hadn’t heard Ashley’s voice since they’d crossed paths on Horizon, so to hear her deliver damning evidence felt like she’d been shot. Her lungs refused to pull in air and the edges of her vision began to darken. But Ashley… she hadn’t told them everything.  _ She hadn’t told them everything. _

When James looked up at Shepard he saw her head bowed and her fists clenched so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.

“It is our impression that you and Ashley Williams grew very close during her posting on the  _ Normandy  _ SR1.”

“Yes,” Shepard croaked. Grief dogged at her heels, snarling and biting, but after a rather derisive look from Anderson Shepard cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. “Chief Williams was an excellent soldier. I’m proud to have had her on my team.”

“Shepard,” the Committee’s eyes were fixed on her, narrow and untrusting, and she forced herself not to crumble, lifting her chin and squaring her shoulders the way her mother taught her to do whenever she was afraid. “What do you have to say to this evidence?”

And Shepard  _ was  _ afraid. But fear had never stopped her before.

“The only reason I worked with Cerberus was because they chose to acknowledge a threat everybody else ignored.” Her voice was loud, clear, deep in tone and commanding the attention of every single person there. Absolute silence had fallen over the room. James was… proud of her, in a way. He’d seen how much she was hurting, how much she’d been compromised, and to see her pick herself up and soldier on even in the face of utter distress was admirable. “The Collectors had to be stopped and Cerberus were the only people willing to do it. The Reapers had to be stopped, too, and destroying that relay was the only way of giving ourselves a chance.”

Murmurs kicked up around the room and James bristled, glancing at Anderson, who kept his gaze trained on Shepard’s back. The Committee sighed, exchanging looks.

“Shepard… how can you expect us to believe your story? An entire race of machines coming to end all life in the galaxy? It’s ridiculous. And then there is the matter of the Alpha relay - you killed almost half a million batarians because of hearsay.”

Shepard drew in a deep, steadying breath. “With all due respect, ma’am,” she said, her voice low and rumbling, sending shivers shooting across James’s skin. “If you don’t believe me, we’re all going to die. Every single man, woman, and child.”

The gallery began to murmur; it was a disquieted sound, as though they were concerned and yet unwilling to believe her in their fear. An icy shiver slipped down James’s spine and the gravity of Shepard’s words. Her voice sounded steadier than he’d ever heard it. Another Committee member sighed and leaned forwards against the bench, movements jarred with reluctance. “Shepard, we have reports on your psychosis as well as a rather alarming psychiatric history. How can you expect us to believe you?”

Shepard stared at them in shock, completely taken aback. Those words had been the last thing she’d expected, and when she next spoke, her voice was crystalline. “You think I’m a lunatic?”

The Committee grew uncomfortable at her wording and she knew she’d hit the nail on the head. Anger bristled through her and for a while all her sadness and grief was chased away.

“You do,” she continued, tone clipped. James’s eyes were riveted to the sight of her strong, proud profile, the bridge of her nose, the masculine cut of her jaw, and his heart quickened at the glimmer of the commander he’d seen in those vids. “You think I’m crazy. You don’t know jack shit about what’s going on, about what I’ve been through, what I’m going through  _ now _ -,” she caught herself and cleared her throat. “It doesn’t matter. Even if you doubt me, there’s a rather nice selection of ‘mentally sound’ operatives for you to pick from if you need corroborating evidence.” She bared her teeth at them in a cruel sneer. “I may be ‘mentally unsound’, but that has nothing to do with what’s going to happen to this galaxy if we don’t do something.”

Anderson pressed his lips into a thin line; it took James a moment to realise he was biting back a smile.

By this point the room had grown restless, and one of the Committee members had to rap sharply on the bench to silence them. “Enough! Shepard, we’re adjourning this for further discussion. You’ll hear from us in three days, no sooner, and until then you will not leave your lodgings. Is that understood?”

Shepard bristled, but nodded. “Yes, sir.”

 

Nobody dared stop her as she passed, James on one side and Anderson on the other. There was no press, no crowding cameras, nothing but a long and empty hallway to greet them as they exited the Committee room. The moment they stepped into the elevator Anderson clapped his hand to Shepard’s shoulder. “Well done, Shepard,” he told her. She didn’t smile and all the colour that had been brought to her face by anger had gone. “I didn’t expect them to dredge up that tape. That was a dirty move.”

If anything, Shepard looked shaken. She should’ve expected them to use Ashley - she should’ve expected Ashley to have told the Alliance what had happened on Horizon. For some reason her foresight had been blinded by her memories of the Ashley she’d known before, the woman who hadn’t considered her a traitor to everything she once stood for. Blinded by nostalgia. And, Shepard realised with a sinking heart, she’d been right. Shepard’s goal had been noble, sure, but she’d forsaken every single virtue she’d upheld before her death. “Yeah. Me neither.”

The journey back to the apartment was spent in absolute silence. Shepard was lost in her thoughts and both James and Anderson didn’t feel like it was right to speak; after all, she had just been tried for terrorism and treachery, as well as having been slapped across the face with a rather painful memory.

“Three days,” Anderson said, and then he sighed, shoulders relaxing. “Child, look at me.”

Hesitantly, Shepard looked up, face gaunt and eyes impossibly hallowed. There was pain there, he saw, so much  _ pain _ , years of it hidden away and bottled tight. He lifted her chin and touched her cheek in a remarkably fatherly gesture - which came as even more of a surprise to James - and Shepard  _ sniffled _ , wiping her nose against the back of her hand.

“You have been through a lot these last few years,” Anderson continued, closing the door to outside ears. “You’ve suffered. I can see that. I don’t know what happened while you were with Cerberus, Jane, and I know you’re not going to tell me, but it must have been bad to warrant what you’ve become. You had friends on that ship, but I know Ashley was more than that to you, that she was a risk you took knowing full well it would bite you in the ass eventually. But I believe in you.” He took hold of her by the upper arms and squeezed, and Shepard’s lips flickered into a barely-there smile. “You’ve never disappointed me before and I know you’re sure as hell not gonna start now. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” she choked, and then she laughed, a crooked sound that James couldn’t quite understand; Anderson, however, did. He pulled Shepard in and  _ hugged  _ her, tightly, and she held him in return, pressing her face into his shoulder. “Thanks.”

Again Anderson touched her cheek. “You need anything, you know where to call.”

Shepard watched him as he left; her face remained ashen and her eyes remained hollow, but her posture had shifted, and she stood a little taller than she had when she’d stepped down of the stand. Silence pressed in around the small studio once Anderson left, broken only by Shepard’s pained sigh as she rubbed her face.

“So, uh...” James cleared his throat, searching desperately for something to say to break the silence. “You and Anderson must’ve known each other for a while, huh?”

He’d asked this exact type of question before. She’d brushed him off last time, and he half expected her to do it again. 

She didn’t.

“Since the First Contact War,” Shepard answered without hesitation, alerting James to the fact that she was just as willing to dissipate the silence as he was. “He served with my parents. He and my mom are good friends, and after my -,” Her breath paused, hesitating, thinking. “When I was a teenager he was kind of like a third parent, you know? Hauling me out of fights and watching out for me when my mom was deployed.”

It made sense, really. As far as James knew Anderson had never had kids of his own, so taking charge of Shepard probably would’ve made up for it. He wanted to ask what it was like - what  _ she  _ was like as a child when humanity still didn’t understand the true scope of the galaxy, as a teenager getting into scrapes on space stations. What it was like to live in a military family and to have such close relations to high-ranking officers? What was Anderson like when he was young? He was brimming with questions he knew he shouldn’t ask.

So he didn’t.

He didn’t ask about Ashley - he avoided even coming close to mentioning the tape. There was something a whole lot deeper than the camaraderie the news had established between those two women, and after what Anderson had said to Shepard after the trial, James was pretty certain he knew what that  _ something  _ was. He shoved down those thoughts as quickly as they rose. Shepard’s relationships were territory he knew he’d best steer clear of.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: explicit psychosis, ptsd, blood n gore etc etc u know how it goes

Shepard spent the most part of the next three days pacing laps around the studio. When she wasn’t pacing - which was rarely - she would sit on one of the sofas by the eastward window and bask in the early-morning sun like a cat, her head tipped back against the wall, eyes shut tight. That was the only time James could really look at her without being forced to meet her own restless, hollow gaze; he found himself staring like a schoolboy, eyes following the strong angle of her jaw and her nose, the curve of her throat. He looked at her hands with their calluses and bitten-down nails, at how she crossed her legs at the ankles and rarely wore shoes. She paced like a wild animal - reminiscent of when he’d first come face-to-face with her in the brig of the  _ Normandy _ \- eyes darting around the studio and never resting on a single place for more than a moment.

“You need to relax,” he made the mistake of telling her at one point after a bad night’s sleep for the both of them. Shepard’s gaze had snapped to his and held it, her pupils drawn in tight, and she’d walked over to him until she was standing a hair’s breadth away, so close he could smell her. He knew then that he’d fucked up.

Shepard was a surprisingly tall woman. She stood at just under 6’ and was broad across the shoulders and hips, something James hadn’t particularly noticed until she was right up in his personal space. She leaned in close, scowling something fierce, eyes flashing, suddenly and overwhelmingly intimidating. Every single nerve stood on end, his skin rising in gooseflesh.

“Or… y’know. Maybe not. Just a suggestion.”

Shepard, seemingly satisfied by him eating his words, stalked away and began to pace again.

By the end of a week shut into the studio even James was beginning to feel boxed in, and very nearly joined Shepard in her circles about the room. Cooping Shepard up like this was only making her ability to deal with everything even more difficult. He could sense it - the entire apartment had become saturated with her stress to the point where James was getting stressed out as well. But it wasn’t just the stress of her verdict, James realised, and this particular realisation was met with a quickly dawning horror: waiting for the verdict wasn’t the hard part, no. For the moment she had larger and more personal concerns. She was restless, lying in wait for the world to begin to move from beneath her feet, waiting for reality to bend, for shadows to start leaking out of the walls. It was waiting for her own brain to start playing cruel tricks on her again that was putting her so on edge. She didn’t sleep.  _ Couldn’t  _ sleep. The darkness seemed to move and slither above her all the same, though, and even when she was awake she would hear the voices speaking to her, even if they were little more than a murmur at the back of her mind. How long would it be until she lost her grip and slipped back into those unbearable episodes? The  _ fits _ ? She already knew how people talked behind her back, about the rumours that circled the underbelly of the Alliance, and she was skimming worryingly close to ridicule. Being feared and despised was one thing - being mocked was another.

Shepard was one of the best damn soldiers in the Alliance and she knew it. Her first posting off-world had been in an elite squadron, she'd graduated at the top of her N7 class, she’d been on Akuze and Elysium, she'd been at the helm of the attack on Torfan, and she'd lead one of the Alliance’s most dangerous black-ops team for years. And yet it wasn’t enough, it was never enough, because she wasn’t quite right in the head sometimes, and nobody could ever seem to overlook it. The minute her illness had been picked up by the officials her life had changed. Only Anderson and Hackett saw her for what she was, and as much as she hated to admit it, having friends in high places was the only thing that had stopped her from being discharged altogether.

_ What if something happens on a mission?  _ they’d demanded of her.

_ It won’t, _ she’d replied, but they didn’t believe her. Nobody ever fucking believed her.

It had been better on the ship, when Miranda was there to slap sense into her, when Jack would yell or Grunt would wrestle her back into what she knew to be true. When Garrus or Thane would hold her or talk her through it. When she could sit with Joker in the cockpit and smile as he chewed her out for being sick, for being _diseased_ , just like him. He warmed to her even more after he found out about her sickness. Her team never minded dumb shit like mental afflictions; Shepard had a no-nonsense policy when it came to things like that, as did Dr Chakwas, who insisted on treating mental injuries just the same as physical ones. Of all people, Dr Chakwas and Miranda were the most open to her, the most understanding. Miranda had come as a surprise - after all, Shepard was her pet project, wasn’t she? - but in time she’d come to appreciate her help and her almost daughterly concern. Even now, Shepard smiled at the thought of Miranda.

But Miranda wasn’t here, now. She had none of them anymore. It was just her and James Vega, who’d never witnessed her psychosis before, and the thought of exposing him to it was, for Shepard, quite terrifying. He’d been given notes by the psychs, sure, but that would do fuck-all when the time came, and she couldn’t risk it. Not now.

James could tell she was struggling. Sometimes he’d catch her passed out from exhaustion, still suffering through her terrors even when she was running on empty, and the worst part was knowing he couldn’t do anything to make it better. So he talked to her as often as he could, talking about the world around them to try and help Shepard stay anchored, but the way her attention flickered made him wonder if it made any difference at all. Each new day made the bent angle of Shepard’s shoulders look a little more painful, as though she was under the weight of some immense, invisible burden. But she managed, somehow. She always managed.

But even Jane Shepard couldn’t last forever. Six days after the Committee’s adjournment, she broke.

It was three o’clock in the morning when it started. Shepard had fallen into a shallow slumber on the sofa facing the windows. She liked to sit there with all the lights turned out, the pinpricks of light from Vancouver shimmering in the distance. It was calming to just sit and watch the shuttles like shooting stars, and this time it had lulled her to sleep, giving her stressed body a much-needed break. Even while she was asleep she fancied she could see the shimmer of lights beyond her eyelids, forming a nebula of illuminated blood vessels and half-formed dreams.

When she woke, however, the window was dark.

Squinting, Shepard rubbed at her eyes and hauled herself off the sofa, her body aching with every movement. She could still see the faint outline of the buildings, but there were no shuttles, and every single light had been shut off. For a moment she wondered if there was a power outage, rare as they were, affecting the city.

_ Shepard. _

The voice made her freeze, heat flooding over her skin. Shepard’s heart pounded in her throat and she forced herself to move, to turn around and gaze into the darkness of the kitchen, eyes unwillingly rising to the ghostly face she saw there. The moonlight - unbearably bright in wake of the city’s darkness - caught against a bold, straight nose and strong cheekbone, dancing along the elegant arch of an eyebrow, and swallowed by dark, gleaming hair.

“Ash,” Shepard croaked, her palms already drenched with sweat, body already kicking into the early stages of an adrenaline-fuelled panic. Nausea rose in her throat, hot and silent, and she watched in terror as Ashley Williams stepped out of the shadow-shrouded kitchen and into the moonlight pooling beneath the window. She was dressed in her standard Alliance armour, just as neat and groomed as always, though she didn’t appear to be armed. Shepard could barely find it in her to breathe as Ashley crossed the space between them, not once stopping until she was so close Shepard could see each eyelash, each little mole. But there was something wrong, as if black, black darkness was shimmering just beneath her skin; uncomfortable little things like shadows flickering at the edges of her peripherals. But she... she  _felt_ so real.

For a while Ashley didn’t speak. She moved until Shepard had nowhere to escape to, trapped in by the glass. Ashley’s expression was unreadable and refused to shift, even once, her dark eyes trained on Shepard. “Ash, please -,”

“I trusted you,” Ashley interrupted, her voice stifled yet as tangible as a punch to the gut. Shepard felt her swallowed tears rise again. “I admired you, I  _ loved  _ you!”

_ You’re a traitor. _

Shepard moaned in anguish, a low sound that came from deep inside her chest; Ashley’s lips didn’t seem to match up with her words, and she kept getting  _ closer  _ even though she’d stopped moving - Shepard’s hands began to shake when she realised that this truly wasn’t Ashley Williams, but some sort of torturous apparition, and she wormed her hands between them to shove the other woman away. Her hands pushed and fell through nothing, and right before Shepard's horrified eyes her face began to open into a festering wound, all rotting flesh and the sickening glimmer of white, bright bone.

She glanced down at her hands and found them dripping with blood. A howl rose in her throat, but the seam of her lips remained closed no matter how hard the sound clawed away at her. The strength drained from her legs and she fell forwards to her knees, watching as black blood began to pool beneath her. Ashley Williams, Shepard's confidant, lover, and best friend, decayed right in front of her eyes in a mess of frothing flesh and blood.

Still the sound would not come.

There was another voice, then. Calling to her. Distant, male, sweet to the ear - the mere sound of it seemed to unlatch something inside her and she gagged, vomit flooding from her mouth and nose. The same words she heard almost every night, replaying the same scene, agony, agony,  _ blood _ , too many dead children and destroyed dreams and not enough guns to face the bright light -

"Jane, what are you doing?"

With a shuddering gasp she staggered to her feet, blindly following the voice, dragging her hands along the walls and leaving thick smears of blood along the walls. The studio suddenly felt like a maze, full of dead-ends and winding corridors, the darkness impenetrable and blinding. All she could do was put one foot in front of the other, following the sound of that voice as it laughed and continued to speak. Sobs tore their way from between her teeth with each word, wet and pathetic.

Soon the wall turned to tile beneath her fingers; she was in a bathroom, dark and as cavernous as the rest of the apartment, and the voice sounded as though it was coming from right behind her.

“Jane,” he said, voice soft, spoken right into her ear. She felt hands about her waist, the press of a chin against her shoulder, the ghosting scent of a memory assaulting her senses and making her head spin. “I miss you, Jane.” it wasn’t real, none of it was real, but she  _ felt  _ it so completely that it couldn’t be  _ not  _ real - !

 

Hands rose to her throat. Strong fingers wrapped around her trachea, crushed her windpipe, but she deserved it, oh, how she deserved it -

Shepard, consumed by a sudden, deafening pain, threw back her head and wailed.

The entire world thundered around her. The darkness pressed closer until she couldn’t see a thing, until she couldn’t draw breath no matter how hard she wheezed for it, leaving her to fumble around like a newborn until she found something other than the endless slick surface of the tile; she clung to it, sobbing, each breath sending excruciating pain coursing through her body. There was more than one voice, now, the echoes of the young and the old, all of whom she could recognise yet could not name, their words lost as the cacophony rose and spun, the darkness dancing and slithering.

A tight pain bloomed in her shoulders, just below the base of her neck, and Shepard wrenched herself away from it, scuttling backwards as best she could until her back hit the tile. She sat there, shivering and gasping, blinded by a sudden light that blasted the darkness apart.

She hid her face in her knees and squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to be faced with the blood-smeared bathroom or the warped sources of the voices she’d heard. She didn’t want to see Ashley again, boiling and bloody and dying, crying out with grief at Shepard’s betrayal. Her body shook violently, her organs convulsing inside her. She didn't want to see  _him_ , her American Dream, the ones she'd lost too soon,  _too soon -_!

“Shepard.” This voice - it was new. It was loud and hit her like a punch to the side of the head, blunt and forceful, lacking the soft dreaminess of the others.

Hesitantly, she looked up.

The bathroom was smattered with bloody handprints and the telltale signs of where Shepard had struggled, but it was no longer as big, and the sudden light put a little ease to her anxiety. James Vega crouched in front of her, his face pale and the left side of his face still creased from his pillow. She stared at him with wide, unblinking eyes.

“Shepard,” he said again. His lips moved. They matched his words. He didn’t echo. “Jesus, Shepard, what the hell’s going on?”

Shepard’s brain was still in overdrive and moving at a thousand miles a minute. When she tried to speak her words came out garbled and she was forced to swallow them, to compose herself, to regain her breath and her lucidity. “James, I’m - they - it’s not -,” Her vision swam and nausea crawled up through her gut as she looked around wildly for someone else, anyone else - but there was nobody. After pausing for a moment, Shepard leaned over the toilet and let herself be violently sick, James catching her collapsing body as she did so.

He remained with her as she shook and sweated, wrapping her bare shoulders in a towel and handing her a glass of water when her stomach finally settled. All she wanted to do was cry - to grieve, to apologise to him for everything she’d put him through since Anderson dragged him off Omega. And James, dear James, he would just give her a smile and tell her it was no worry, not at all.  _ Fuck him _ , Shepard’s mind wailed.  _ Fuck him and his unending patience, fuck his understanding! Fuck it all!  _ She grasped at him as she shivered and let her face collapse. She was too tired to keep it together.

James, while considerably disturbed by what Shepard was going through, tried to keep his composure. His hands returned to Shepard’s shoulders - bare and slick with sweat beneath the towel - and he helped her straighten up a little. “Okay. Right. Uh… so. You okay?”

“No, I…” Words failed her. There was nothing to say.

James was flailing. He had no idea what to do - here sat Shepard after having woken him (and probably half the base) with the most unsettling cry James had heard in his life, shaking like a leaf and almost drowning in her own sweat. Her pupils were blown wide to the point where her eyes were almost black, and he could practically feel how fast her heart was beating just from his hold on her shoulders. Try as she might to calm herself, it wasn’t working. Her body was going into overdrive.

Her fingers found his face. They were sticky and unsteady and he froze as they began to explore the line of his nose, his brow, his cheeks; he looked at her and her gaze was crooked, unfocused. “My  _ fucking  _ \- James, please, the…  _ blood. _ ”

James glanced around the bathroom. “There’s… there’s no blood.”

But she could still see it, in all its vivid colour and thick, viscous consistency - she could smell it, taste it on her tongue, and watched as it trickled between the tiles. Her shaking hands clung to him, holding her to his body like an infant to its mother, and all he could do was wind his arms about her back and hold her in return. Her whole body trembled. She pressed her face into his shoulder and cried; if he felt pain at the bite of her fingernails through his shirt, he didn’t flinch. He rubbed her back and soothed her, soundlessly, until she stopped shaking so hard and wiped her nose against his shoulder. Shepard swallowed hard, her hands finding James’s shoulders and gripping them. To her own eyes, her arms were still drenched in blood, the bathroom still streaked with it, and she tried her best to fight tooth and nail against what she could see.

“They were here, they came again, all at once.” Breathing deep. Heart rate steadying. Gaze focusing.

“Who came? Who was here?”

Shepard’s lips were dry. “They… them.” She couldn’t speak their names. It was blasphemy.

“I didn’t hear anyone, Shepard. Nobody’s here but us.” His replies were coming easier, now, more confident. He was adjusting. His hands remained anchored on her shoulders, her hands on his, and they just held each other there, steadying. James held her gaze and, for the first time, seemed determined not to let it go. “You still hearing ‘em?”

Shepard listened. She shook her head. Shadows flickered at the edges of her vision and there were murmurs, but they were faint, and she couldn’t make out the words. All she wanted to do was crawl into his arms and stay there.

“You still seeing the blood?”

She nodded. “It’s… it’s all right,” she managed, squeezing James’s shoulders. “It… I’ve seen it before. This kind of thing. At least there’s no bodies, this time.” She’d meant it as a joke, but it fell sour, and James’s face paled.

When Shepard made to stand James held tightly to her arms with one hand, his other going to her waist to make sure she didn’t stumble. She held onto him for a few moments as she got her bearings, blinking in the still-glaring light and looking around the blood-streaked bathroom. Her mouth had gone dry, but she’d stopped shaking aside from a gentle tremor in her fingers, and she pressed those fingers to her closed eyes and focused on getting her breathing back under control.

“James?”

“Yeah?”

“Could you turn on all the lights?”

She was trying to be brave, he could tell. And yet she still sounded so strangely soft, so afraid - vulnerable, really. Swallowing, James nodded, but was hesitant to leave. “Let me help you to your bed, first, okay?”

She didn’t try and stop him when he slung her arm over his shoulders, allowing her to lean most of her weight against him. He hit the lights as they went, illuminating the studio and chasing away any shadow that still lingered. When Shepard glanced towards the window she saw that Vancouver was lit up brightly once again, and couldn’t help the sight of relief that rushed from her lungs.

James helped her settle down onto her bed, making sure she was propped up and comfortable before he went to turn on the rest of the lights. She could heard him moving about, the faint beeps of the switchboards, and then there was music floating over the partition, soft notes of latin jazz not unlike the sort her mother used to play when Shepard was a child.

“Why are you playing music?” she asked James when he came back into sight, pulling a shirt down over his bare torso.

“I dunno,” he said with a shrug. “Just thought the silence was a bit much, you know? Needed something to lighten the mood. You hungry?”

Nausea still sat cold at the bottom of Shepard’s stomach. She shook her head.

“ _ No hay problema _ ,” James told her. “I got the munchies, though.”

The sound of James cooking was a comfort Shepard never knew she needed. Of course she knew he wasn’t hungry, of course, but the thought of him doing this for her comfort was… kind. It was unexpected of someone who was supposed to hate her - but then again, she  _ also  _ knew James didn’t hate her. He hadn’t, not since the first time they’d met, not once.

Her fear lessened in the wake of the bright apartment and influx of noise, chasing away the voices and the shadows. James, too, answered every question she had, allowing Shepard to navigate through the world properly without confusing what she saw with what was actually there. Her mind still wanted her to believe what wasn’t true, but she fought too hard, and eventually it retreated back into its shell, licking its wounds. He didn’t get it, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try his damned best to help her.

Little by little her body began to relax. Her heart rate slowed and her hands eventually stopped shaking. James hummed as he worked, muttering to himself every now and again, and Shepard found herself filled with warmth, which was a welcome sensation after the icy chill of her hallucinations. They were always that way: always violent and cold, the dredging up of dead memories, the opening of old wounds. And she’d tried so  _ hard  _ to keep them all at bay, but she’d failed. She always failed when it came to this kind of thing.

Shepard closed her eyes and, for the first time in a very long while, fell into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

 

Eight days later Anderson returned with a grim expression and a single datapad in his hand.

“When’s the execution?” Shepard asked flatly when he entered, half hoping she was right. Death - or the idea of it, at least - had become a very sweet prospect. He frowned at her and tossed her the datapad, which she caught and scrolled through. As she did, her eyebrows shot up and she let out a single bark of stunned laughter.

“Good news, Shepard,” Anderson said. “You get to keep your head this time.”


	8. Chapter 8

“‘House arrest’!” Shepard exclaimed. “Jesus, Anderson, you must’ve performed a fucking miracle for this.”

Anderson, admittedly, did look rather proud of himself. “No miracles involved, unfortunately. Just a lot of late nights and one-sided arguments. Now hurry up and get your things together. You’re being transferred immediately.”

James had never seen Shepard move with such energy outside the gym. They hadn’t brought much with them in the first place, so within the hour they were escorted out of the housing block and down a labyrinth of utility hallways until they reached a more central part of the base; James recognised it as the main building, and as they headed up to one of the upper floors he realised they were headed towards the officers’ apartments.

“A galactic terrorist being put up in a place like this?” Shepard mused to Anderson, still riding the high of her verdict. Thankfully, wary of the Alliance marines escorting them, she decided not to speak again.

The apartment they were shown to was a good sight bigger than the last one. It had one bedroom, a separate kitchen and living area, and a rather spacious bathroom. It felt airy, spacious, and had wide west-facing windows that overlooked the Vancouver cityscape.

“Lieutenant, you’ll be staying with Shepard. It’s a condition of her house arrest - you’ll remain here to supervise.” Ah - so that was the catch. Regardless, James saluted Anderson.

“Understood, sir.”

“And you, Shepard, are to keep those cuffs on, though security parameters will be lowered. There’s a gym downstairs you’re free to use but you’re prohibited from leaving this building.”

“Right.” Shepard’s attention was focussed on the windows, however, and she stepped into a swathe of afternoon sunlight as squinted out at the city. As grating as she found the galaxy’s unwillingness to act out against the Reapers, she couldn’t help being a little comforted by this place. It had a homey air to it, something a lot warmer and more welcoming than the studio.

“Our main focus is to give you time to recover,” Anderson continued. “You’ll be having weekly sessions with Alliance psychiatrists and physiotherapists. The brass even suggested a consultation with a cosmetic surgeon about those… you know. Scars, if that’s even the right word for them.”

Shepard looked bewildered. “Cosmetic surgery? They’re willing to pay for that?”

Anderson’s expression grew strained and he fidgeted with his collar. “Yes, if you decide to go ahead with it. They, uh… you’ve turned a lot of heads, Shepard, with your skeleton all lit up like a Christmas tree.”

For once Shepard didn’t argue. She merely acknowledged Anderson’s terms - not that it meant she’d honor them, of course, but for now her agreement was enough. The talk of concealing her cybernetics and split skin had unsettled her; they’d become just as much a part of her as any other battle wound, and she decided in that moment that any Alliance cosmetic surgeon they sent her way could stuff it, even if it was just to spite the brass.

“I’ll leave you two to get settled in,” Anderson said. “Oh, also, this place is under full surveillance. So behave, Shepard.”

Shepard laughed at that.

Once Anderson had taken his leave, James got stuck into exploring. He visited the bedroom, which sported two single beds on opposite sides of the room, a dresser, bookcase, and wardrobe. Even though they had to share a room, it felt like something of a miracle compared to the dark, cramped space he’d had to share with Shepard in the studio. The bathroom was a good bit bigger, too, with a double sink and wide mirror, and there was space enough in the apartment to properly stretch his legs, the walls thick enough to drown out sound so it didn’t feel like everything was taking place all in the same spot.

Shepard, however, was content just looking out over the city. He could tell she was enjoying the space, too, though in a different way than he was.

“You okay?” he asked, causing her to shift a little and turn to face him. The sun made her cybernetics glow and made the shadows beneath her eyes seem deeper.

“Yeah,” she replied, as if woken from a daze. “I’m fine. Just… it’s been a while since I saw this place.”

Now that was interesting. “You’ve visited Vancouver before?”

“Oh, sure.” Shepard leaned against the window and folded her arms as James flopped down onto the sofa by the wall. “My father was Canadian. I got deployed here a few times early on in my training.” It was the first time she’d ever mentioned her father, a fact that wasn’t lost on James.

He mulled over that for a little bit. “My uncle always wanted to take me to Canada,” he said. “To see the snow and all that.”

Shepard lowered herself down onto the sofa opposite him, still in the warm glow of the sun. “So you’ve never seen the snow?”

“Uh… not on Earth, no.”

Shepard paused for a moment and looked at him with a faint smile. James found it hard to imagine Shepard in the snow; she was someone who struck him as a warm-weathered type of person, one who preferred beaches and sunlight to the cold bite of winter. Just by looking at her he could tell her bloodline had flourished beneath the sun, what with her broad-featured face and freckles not entirely dissimilar from the dark faces of the children he’d see peeking out from behind broken fence slats when he was a kid. But then again, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d misjudged her.

They lapsed into silence again; James kept glancing at her from out of the corner of his eye, appraising how she sat so neatly with one leg crossed over the other, shadows cast across the dips in her skin against the glare of the sun, and she glowed, a haze of red and gold.

James allowed himself to stare, just for a moment. To drink in the sight of her in all her tragic beauty, in all her pain, in all her suffering. Ever since her episode they had reached a mutual understanding; it was never outwardly acknowledged, but it was there all the same, a strange camaraderie as if Shepard had let him in on an enormous secret. And something like this  _ was  _ a big secret for someone like Shepard. Psychosis…  _ psychotic _ . He’d heard that word used so many times, but he’d never truly understood the gravity of it until now. This wasn’t some personality flaw: it was an illness that affected each and every facet of her life no matter how hard she tried to stop it. She was ashamed and frustrated by it, he could tell. But he knew about it, now, and he’d seen it in its rawest form, and with that knowledge came a bridge between him and Shepard that hadn’t been there before.

“Well,” Shepard sighed as she lifted herself from the sofa, stepping out of the slanting sunlight and into the darkness where she melted from red to blue and once again became fractured. She wiped her hands on her shirt. “Looks like you’re stuck babysitting me for a bit longer.”

“How long are they gonna keep you here?” James asked her, and she shrugged. “They can’t just keep you locked up forever, right?”

“They could, but it would only be a matter of time before I’d lose it and try to force my way out, after which I’d be either free or dead.”

James frowned. “You’re too important.”

Her eyes settled on him, her left eyebrow quirking upwards, the scars over her brow winking in the light. Her voice was surprisingly soft when she spoke. “James, I destroyed a star system and snuffed out almost half a million lives. The things I did for Cerberus were  _ evil _ . No amount of commendations will fix that.”

He ground his teeth. “Sure, but when the Reapers come - and they  _ will  _ come - who do you think they’re gonna turn to?”

Something in her gaze shifted; something cold, almost unnoticeable, as though shutters had been closed and opened again behind the glowing rings of her irises. “You believe the Reapers are real?”

The question made James clench his fists on his thighs; for a fleeting moment he could still hear the sound of rushing grass and distant voices from Fehl Prime, the wind whistling in his ears. “Yeah.”

Shepard remained incredibly still. Her fingers twitched by her sides. “You’ve seen something.”  _ You know something. _

James’s tongue turned to sand in his mouth. All he could do was nod.

Thankfully Shepard didn’t ask him anymore, but James felt that hair-thin bridge between them grow a little stronger.

The knowledge that James had encountered something to do with the Reapers - she didn’t know what, didn’t have the gall to ask - seemed to temper Shepard a little bit. There were so many possibilities, so many gruesome ways James could have been exposed to them. And yet… when she’d first seen him, she never would have known it. He looked like every other normal, fit marine she’d seen, and she wasn’t sure whether it was because it didn’t affect him or because he was able to hide it far better than she’d thought.

Perhaps he wasn’t just misjudging her. Perhaps it went both ways.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry christmas lads!!!!! thank u all so much for supporting this fic, i can't even tell you how much it means to me!! i hope yall have a great xmas (or whatever respective religious holiday u celebrate this time of year)!!

It was easy to settle into things now their living space had expanded. It no longer felt like they were cooped up in an inconceivably small space; Shepard was able to go to and from the gym as she pleased - provided she brought James along with her - and it was good for both of them to work themselves to near-exhaustion rather than being forced to sit and ruminate.

Slowly, Shepard began to eat again. Even after their return to Earth she still picked at her food, rarely finishing even half of the meals put in front of her. James would tell her he was offended that she didn’t like his cooking, but it wasn’t hard to tell that it wasn’t merely a conflict in taste. Something was wrong with her.

James was no psych - he was worried, sure, but he could do nothing except helplessly watch as Shepard continued to waste away in front of him while having no idea how to fix it. That wasn’t his call. His job was to “keep her in line”, as Anderson had said. Nothing more, nothing less.

And yet - somehow she’d started to mend. The first time he saw her completely finish a meal was late in the evening after he’d finished showering; Shepard sat alone at the kitchen table with a datapad in one hand and a butter knife in the other, the steel tip of the knife humming over the plate’s surface. An empty plate, streaked with the grease leftover from some kind of cheap frozen meal she’d dredged up from the freezer, but a meal all the same. And she didn’t even seem to notice.

It wasn’t just the meals, either. She’d sit in the afternoon sun and listen to the same old music she always did, her eyes closed and her head leaning against the window, letting herself fall into thoughts that were worlds away. Memories, perhaps, of a happier place, or a happier time. Rather than find the music and Shepard herself jarring, James came to associate one with the other, so that whenever he heard the opening chords of  _ Moonlight Sonata  _ he would think of Shepard and the calmness that settled over her brow.

She slept a little more than she usually did and didn’t wake up screaming so many times. They still shared a room, but their beds were pushed against opposite walls, a wide dresser set between them. Sleeping with so much distance between them felt strange, now, after so many weeks of being stuffed into such a tiny living space; James lay awake on the other side of the room staring at the darkness of the ceiling, disconcerted by the silence. He learned that Shepard rose early and went to bed late by force of habit; as the weeks drew on, however, he also learned that she was naturally a late riser, her few sleep-ins inching further and further into the day.

Even though she’d come such a long way from where she’d been in the brig, Shepard still remained deeply affected. The rawness of it had faded, yes, but she still drifted off in the middle of conversation, and she was still prone to long periods of anger and hostility. Her moods were unpredictable and violent in their capacity, like a child rapidly flicking a light switch on and off, and the lines in her face seemed to deepen with the effort she put into trying to control it. She saw her doctors twice a week - once on Tuesdays and once on Thursdays - but it didn’t seem to be doing her any good. She hadn’t suffered any more episodes, though, even despite the plague of a hallucination or two every now and again. They were fleeting, shadowy things, never quite enough to make her question the reality of the world around her but just enough to throw her off guard.

As a girl Shepard’s mother had told her that whenever she was in distress to imagine a place she was happy; it had worked, once, before those she loved began to die in droves around her and the act of reflecting upon happiness brought with it inexplicable pain. Shepard had no happy place - to return  _ there  _ would be to think of those she loved, whose bodies lay cold in the earth or blown to pieces in the endless vacuum of space. She didn’t have that escape. And so she sat and listened to Mozart and tried to distract herself from everything as best she could, riding each arching note, allowing her mind to go black for as long as she could manage. They were rare moments of peace that not even sleeping would allow.

Dreams still haunted her. Dreams… they were still very much the same as when she’d been dragged off Akuze, dehydrated and savaged by thresher maw venom, fist pounding on the door of death once again. The faces of the dead had changed since then, but it was still the same. Back then, after Akuze, she’d turned her back on the military and had tried to start a new life as a civilian; she wasn’t terribly good at it, but it was all she could do to try and forget about it, or to at least fill her mind with other things,  _ enough _ things to keep her distracted. It’s what she’d always done - after her father had been killed in action when she was a child she’d wandered the space stations she lived on and picked fights with the other military kids until she enlisted at eighteen. Tragedy had dogged at her heels ever since then, and she knew she was only keeping one step ahead of it by the skin of her teeth.

Part of her wondered about James, too. She already knew he’d seen  _ something  _ of the Reapers, though she wasn’t sure what, or how much - but the way James’s entire expression tightened up hadn’t gotten past her.  _ That  _ wasn’t something he could fake. It wasn’t something he _ would  _ fake, anyway - James Vega wasn’t the kind of man to build himself on lies.

_ James Vega. _ Shepard had grown fond of him, in a way; he was something fresh and bright, loyal and driven. He reminded her of the ocean, somehow. She’d always liked the ocean.

James Vega was strange to her. She’d seen her fair share of marines who wanted to make a change in the world, to put down their enemies or to bring justice to an unjust galaxy (she never failed to bite back a laugh when she heard that one), but James was different. She could practically imagine him as a new recruit: uniform always straight, eyes home to that distinct sparkle of promise, the kind of person who took their posting in the Alliance incredibly seriously. Nothing like she’d been as a recruit. James, she knew, still retained some of those values. Shepard had an eye for those kind of things -  there was promise in him, an untold strength that was both physical and mental, a force of will backed by unerring kindness and selflessness and patience. He didn’t once complain about being with her for all hours of the day, didn’t once murmur behind her back, didn’t once complain about being woken by her screaming. He was just… a nice person to be around. Friendly. Minded his own business. Watched her back, woke her from her nightmares. Answered her unflinchingly whenever she had to check whether or not there was a person in that corner of the room, or whether or not her scars were bleeding, reinforcing the concrete world so often that it had almost become a habit.

She admired him for it. For how well he’d dealt with everything. With  _ her _ . That admiration sat awkwardly with her, reluctant, but she couldn’t discount it. She almost wanted to write him a thank-you card.

There were very few people she was relatively comfortable being around when her psychosis kicked in, most of whom were already dead. She’d kept it a secret on the SR1, revealing it only to Ashley in the secure darkness of her cabin after she’d found her there, sweating and gasping and with vision gone black. Miranda knew, obviously, and it was a whole lot harder to hide on the SR2 when her sanity truly began to slip. Liara had found out far too much about her through her work brokering secrets on Ilium, and her smile had been pitying when they’d parted ways. Most of her crew members knew she was sick, but they didn’t press for information, and Miranda never said anything. Garrus knew, too. She had a history with them all, a rapport built on the backs of their near-death experiences and shared trauma. But James Vega? She had nothing with him, no shared past, no common interests. They’d been thrown together by chance and forced to make do, and were only now finding out about their faintly-connected experiences; he’d seen her sweating and shaking and crying, he’d seen her in one of her worst states, he’d seen her vulnerable and afraid and  _ hurting  _ and she could do nothing about it. She knew it would most likely happen again, too.

Thankfully he’d dealt with it surprisingly well.

“You don’t have to walk on eggshells ‘round me, you know,” he told her. “You’re dealing with a lot of shit, I get it. I’d be more worried if you weren’t affected at all, actually.” He’d laughed at that last part, like it was some kind of joke, and Shepard felt the heaviness in her chest ease up just a little.

“I’m psychotic, James,” Shepard replied. Her voice was gentle and he knew it was because she was ashamed. “It’s not the same.”

And yet Shepard knew James was right. He didn’t have experience with psychosis as far as she knew, but he’d undoubtedly seen this sort of thing before and would see it again long after they parted ways and fell out of each other’s memories.

But what Shepard didn’t know was that James  _ was  _ affected by her. He hated himself for neglecting to realise that the hero he knew Shepard to be was a human just like the rest of them, just as susceptible. He was angry that he never thought about it before. That he’d revered her for bearing the brunt of her experiences so expertly when she’d really done nothing of the sort. All her anguish was bottled up very deep and very tightly inside her, he discovered, and he knew that she needed to get it out. Somehow. It would kill her, otherwise, that was for sure.

How on earth would he draw it out of her, though? Shepard was locked up tighter than half of the highest-security prisons in the galaxy, desperately stuffing away each inkling of emotion; it was almost like she was afraid of exposing herself, or of seeming vulnerable, even though she was entirely safe. The psychiatrists encouraged her to open up, or to at least talk to someone. She never did.

He couldn’t talk to her about it, either. He was no shrink. Hell, he wasn’t even good with his  _ own  _ feelings let alone other people’s. And yet he was still gripped by the unshakeable desire to help her. Somehow.

James had begun to wake up on reflex the very moment Shepard started talking in her sleep. Even if she fell asleep on the sofa - which was often - he would hear her, waking at the faintest of sounds, like a light switch being flipped. It was natural for him, now. He’d usually just go to her and wake her up if she was distressed, but recently he’d begun to listen, to try and decipher what she was saying. It was difficult; she seemed to be speaking in tongues, a language with fluid, romantic verbs and hard stops. Somehow it reminded him of his childhood in San Diego, where the latine neighbourhood met with that of Haitian immigrants, and again he saw dark faces through fences in the back of his mind. He caught a name or two, sometimes, names that he didn’t recognise. But there was a phrase he managed to hear after a few nights of listening to her murmuring.

_ Forgive me. _

He woke Shepard gently when the nightmares haunted her, drowning her, leaving her twitching and unable to breathe. Other nights they were violent, throwing her across her bed or onto the floor, sending her into convulsions that forced screams from her lungs. He ran to her, then, wrenching her from the strangling grip of her sheets and shaking her until he could drag her from the terrors.

Every time she woke shaking, her skin clammy and cold. James hadn’t once seen her sleep uninterrupted for more than a few hours apart from the night she’d suffered her episode. It took her a few minutes to come to terms with her wakefulness, and in those minutes she held him so tightly he had to bite his tongue against the pain; but he let her, because she needed that anchor. He learned that his hands holding her in turn calmed her down significantly, so he did, until she eventually shook her head and pushed him away, thanking him before rolling over or leaving the room, ignoring him.

It was always the same.

She didn’t want to repeat what had happened in the studio. It scared her immensely, more so now because she was so completely  _ alone _ , without EDI or Miranda keeping a watchful eye over her. There was James, sure, but he was a stranger to this side of her. As far as Shepard was concerned, James had no loyalty to her, no reason to stop him from tucking her illness away for blackmail. He’d seen her too closely: he’d seen the panicked, violent side that dissolved her intuition and her morals. It was too close. Too much. And even though he knew so much he barely knew anything at all; he hadn’t  _ seen  _ what she’d done, the lives she’d taken, the blood she’d shed. He only knew the old Shepard. The dead one.

The first thing she’d learned in life was never to be vulnerable around strangers. Hackett had taught her that, though Hackett  _ had  _ always been a tough son of a bitch and, as far as she knew, he’d never let anyone in. He’d never had a wife, never had kids. Even so, he taught her valuable lessons about how to survive in the military and the galaxy as a whole, and at times had treated her like a child of his own (jarring as those memories were, Shepard held them close with a strange sense of tenderness). So at least she had him to thank for that.

Her entire world was contained to the naval base, now, and would likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. Shepard tried her best to be pragmatic about it; she got used to the apartment and managed to memorise most of the hallways and corridors of the base to the point she could practically make it to the gym with her eyes closed. She set a routine that she tried to stick to, but with her inability to sleep she found herself disoriented. She rarely fell asleep before the shriek of James’s bedside alarm.

James, however, managed well. He was good at keeping a routine: he got up at six, headed to the gym for an hour, came back, and made breakfast for both him and Shepard. If she wasn’t already awake he’d go in and rouse her, and sat pleased as Shepard actually began to  _ eat  _ his food rather than just push it around her plate. She wasn’t looking so painfully thin anymore; her clothes began to fill out and her face seemed stronger, somehow, less like she was hurtling towards death. Her hair continued to grow down around her ears, and James could see the shimmer of grey when her hair hit the sun. Shepard had a little habit of trying to tuck it behind her ear, though due to its length she was rarely successful. The little huff and grimace was, admittedly, amusing. The first time James had grinned at it Shepard smacked him in the first gesture of good humour he’d seen her give. It was honouring, in a way, and James couldn’t help but think about it for the rest of the day.

Shepard continued to play her music, though now James had started to play his as well, mostly when he was cooking. Shepard was immensely thankful he’d decided to take the culinary tasks into his own hands; she’d never been very good at cooking, much to her grandmother’s dismay, relying heavily on whatever the mess had to serve. James’s food was different from the kind she usually had; deeper, somehow, tasting of a home rather than mass-produced and undercooked. It was one of Shepard’s small comforts. He’d play his music while he cooked, filling the apartment with rich sounds and smells that heralded his ancestry; spices and soft jazz, James’s slightly out-of-tune humming, the hiss and spit of fried soul food that gave Shepard rare sprigs of happiness. It was  _ old  _ happiness, the same kind she used to feel when she still lived aboard ships with her parents, when her mother would dredge up her old Cuban recipes and fill their home with laughter and songs.

Whenever James turned on his music and laid claim to the kitchen Shepard began to sit by him. At first she’d stay in the living area pretending like she had something to do, but every time she’d gravitate a little closer to the hub of warmth, her overstressed nerves singing, begging her to immerse herself in the atmosphere James was creating. She never let herself, though, not fully. She had to remind herself constantly that she was here as a  _ prisoner _ , that she wasn’t on some overdue holiday.

James was her jailor. He was not her friend.

Shepard reminded herself of this over and over again and yet could never truly bring herself to believe it. James was too…  _ friendly _ . He was nice to her - kind, even. She didn’t understand why. She wasn’t a  _ good  _ person, or even a kind one. Not anymore, at least. He had no reason to be kind to her -  _ her _ , the mass-murderer of hundreds upon thousands of innocent batarians, the woman who’d killed civilians in cold blood in her pursuit of the Collectors - and yet he was anyway. It frightened her.

He made her nervous.

James noticed her hovering just outside his sphere of influence; she skirted around the edges of his awareness like a shadow, refusing to look in his direction, but he knew her well enough by then to know that she was listening.

“I don’t bite, you know,” he said. “Unless you’re into that.”

That was the first time he ever flirted with her.

Was flirting with Commander Shepard a risky move? Sure. But it was how James had always been, and the prickle of regret didn’t really register until it was too late. She was incredibly attractive, it was true - she always had been, especially back before she’d died (that thought almost made James laugh. How ridiculous it sounded). James had seen images of her mother, the respected Captain Hannah Shepard, and comparing Hannah to her daughter was easy: Shepard had inherited the same straight teeth and dark hair and almond-shaped eyes. The freckles, almost invisible, the broad nose, the expressive mouth. He’d never seen her father, but he was still able to pick out bits of her that must’ve come from him, and from that was able to create some sort of patchwork entity of what he must have been like. She was beautiful, James thought, in a hardened, tragic kind of way. And so his flirting had a slight edge of truth to it, though whether or not Shepard would detect it was another story.

Shepard glanced at him, shocked, her eyes full of fire. How long had it been since someone was casual with her like that? Long enough to surprise her, James realised as he grinned at her, noticing as she tried to push her hair back behind her ears when she looked away. Biting the inside of his cheek, James tried to focus on his cooking again.

It took two weeks for Shepard to finally enter the kitchen while he was in it.

At first her movements were anxious: she moved like a cat, cautious and unsure, before slowly making her way over to the counter beside the stove, peering curiously into the saucepan James held over the hotplate. “What’re you making?”

James laughed, thrilled by her sudden proximity. She leaned against the counter, not quite passing into his personal space, but getting far closer to him than she usually did. He looked at her, at the way her face glowed in the light from the range hood, the healing gleam of her hair and the way her eyes rose slowly to meet his. He smiled and offered her a taste of the sauce he’d been reducing.

To his surprise, she accepted.

“Careful,” he mumbled, lungs squeezing as she turned towards him, leaning in so their shoulders almost touched. Christ, he was getting as worked up as a schoolboy. “It’s hot.”

Her lips touched the spoon he held, and he watched, transfixed, unable to tear her eyes from her mouth. He’d never noticed the pleasant dip and rise of her lips before, or the way her lower lip was chafed from the time she spent gnawing at it, or the tiny, dark freckle hidden at the corner of her mouth. She licked her lips as she pulled away, and hummed, pleased.

“Never pegged you for a cook.”

James grinned. “I’m a man of many talents.” He paused, then, an idea popping to mind. “Hey, do you think we could get wine in here?”

Shepard looked doubtful. “I don’t think they’d allow it,” she said. “But Anderson…”

Moving the saucepan off the heat, James turned around, flicking the dish towel over his shoulder. “My uncle used to tell me that good food requires three things: good ingredients, good music, and good wine. Ingredients… they’re not as good as they  _ could  _ be, and this stereo is pretty shitty, but two out of three is better than nothing, right?”

Despite herself, Shepard smiled. “Right.”

Part of her seemed to loosen a little bit after that. She was content just watching him as he cooked, tasting for him when he asked her to and finding herself unable to brood at the sensations he was giving her with each smell, each touch of flavour to her tongue. How long had it been since she’d seen someone cook like this? Years, perhaps decades. The whisper of a memory outside the military, of a luxury she’d long since forgone. And yet here she was, prisoner, watching as her jailor brought her a forgotten joy. The entire situation was backwards.

She didn’t mind, though.

“Where did you learn all this?” she found herself asking, the promise she’d made of keeping to herself completely abandoned. “This… sort of thing isn’t something you learn in the military.”

James laughed; the movement sent a tremble through his broad shoulders and Shepard tilted her head to the side, biting down on the inside of her cheek. “Nah, most of the marines I know couldn’t cook their way out of a wet paper bag. This is all thanks to my abuela.” He shot her a grin over his shoulder.

“So you’re a grandma’s boy, huh?” A warm smile hid just behind Shepard’s lips. “You got any more surprises up those sleeves of yours?”

Chuckling, James finally turned off the stovetop, juggling handfuls of saucepans and plates. “Aw, c’mon, Shepard. Just because I’m some big tough marine doesn’t mean I can’t be a bit of a softie.”

Those words were familiar enough to send coldness shooting through her belly.

_ Just because I could drill you between the eyes at a hundred yards doesn’t mean I can’t like sensitive stuff. _

She pushed the thought away.

Shepard felt like a child as she waited for James to set the table. Half of her wanted to ask if she could help out, but he had the entire ordeal so under control that she didn’t really want to interrupt. It was mouthwatering. Shepard hadn’t felt this hungry in a very long time, and James noticed the way she eyed his food, his gut clenching with pride. He’d been so worried about Shepard’s unwillingness to eat that to see her  _ hungry _ for his food was… good. Really good.

The sun had set beyond the cityscape, pinpricks of lights from the skyscrapers flickering to life in the darkening plane of the sky. The shuttles formed hazy red channels between buildings, lining the horizon where the daylight still lingered, the light already filtering blue and sleepy through the apartment windows. Thankfully the lights in the kitchen were warm and not quite as overwhelming as the studio’s had been.

“Wine is a good idea,” Shepard mumbled mournfully as James set down their plates and settled in across the table. The heat of them warmed Shepard’s face and smelled even better close up. She caught his eye across the table. “I’ll ask Anderson. Then you’ll cook for me again because this is the best food I’ve had in a solid five years.”

James laughed. “You haven’t even started yet!”

“I don’t need to. I  _ know _ .”

“Yes, ma’am.” James was still grinning that same insufferable grin, but for the first time Shepard didn’t find it annoying. They ate together in silence, Shepard’s mouth filled to bursting with heat and sharp spice, and with each mouthful she swallowed down groans of absolute content.

She finished before he did.

He glanced across the table at her, surprised, as she leaned back in her chair and sighed, one hand on her belly.

“Damn,” James said, finishing up his own plate. “That’s some solid flattery.”

“I told you I didn’t need to taste it to know it was good,” Shepard replied. “I was right.”

Setting down his fork, James set his elbows upon the table and leaned his chin against his hands. He took a moment just to look at her, and she looked back, both content in their silence. Shepard looked… warm. Comfortable. At home, almost, in a funny sort of way. And James, well… he felt comfortable looking at her. She was so  _ in place  _ sitting across the table from him, having just eaten a meal he’d made for her, looking quite ready to fall asleep.

“You’re thinking,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “Penny for your thoughts, Lieutenant?”

James shook his head. “White noise,” he lied. “Good food does that to you, I guess.”

Humming in agreement, Shepard held his gaze for a moment longer before beginning to get up and clear away the plates. They cleaned up in silence, the music tracks having wound to a close, the only noise between them being the clinking of crockery.

“Well, I’m gonna throw in the towel,” James said as he dried off his hands.

“Me too.” Shepard yawned, then, rubbing at her left eye. She paused. “James.”

“Hm?”

“Thank you.”

There was no smile, but her eyes were sincere, and James swallowed thickly as he nodded. “Anytime.”

James’s heart hammered in his throat as he made his way to his room. The whole place still smelled like spices and he couldn’t stop thinking about how Shepard had looked sitting across from him; he hadn’t been able to stop looking at her, at her high cheekbones or broad forehead, or the way her eyelashes fluttered as she ate. How her hair hung into her eyes. Over her forehead. The raw beauty of her.

He struggled to calm himself down; a cold shower helped, but he still lay awake staring at the ceiling for at least an hour after he hit the lights. Shepard lay just across the room and he couldn’t stop  _ thinking  _ about it, damn it. He pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes in some vain hope it might send him off to sleep sooner.

Only a little way away Shepard also lay awake, her face pressed into her pillow, the plethora of sensations still spread over her tongue. She was frightened. Despite everything - despite her crippling mental instability, despite the amount of trauma she’d been through, despite the fact that she was being imprisoned by the very people she used to serve - it had very nearly felt like nothing was wrong. That the world was perfectly normal, that she was merely sitting down to dinner with a friend.

_ A friend. _

It frightened her. James was not supposed to be her friend. He was a supervisor, a jailor, someone employed by her captors to keep her in line. He was not supposed to be kind to her, or nice to her, or even friendly. And yet he was. He treated her like a human being when everyone else treated her like she was some sort of monster. He knew nothing about her and yet he was  _ kind _ , and he tried to understand her, and the more Shepard thought about it the more frightened she became of it, of  _ him _ . Of the way he made her feel.

Jamming her face into the pillow, Shepard tried to block out the thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it would appear that the match has been lit


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sup homies i hope your 2019 is going well!!!!!!! i'm gonna drop some links for yall
> 
> shepard's aesthetic board: https://www.pinterest.com.au/mascharist/games-mass-effect/ch-jane-shepard/  
> some purgatory covers i made bc why not: https://imgur.com/a/m7Jk0PU

All James could see was darkness.

Darkness, to him, had always been a cold thing. Empty and wide-open like the deep sea. He’d been afraid of it ever since he was young, huddling beneath his blankets with a flashlight. But this… this was different. This darkness was warm. Close. Stifling, almost, in an overwhelmingly pleasant kind of way. A dull pleasure pulsed alongside his heartbeat. He wasn’t sure where it was coming from.

“James.”

The name was purred. Low. Husky. James’s consciousness stirred a little, as though it had been dredged up from very deep underwater, spreading low and hot beneath his skin. He recognised that voice from… somewhere.

Cracking open his eyes, James looked down the length of his body. His sheets were tangled up around his legs and the room was still dark; he couldn’t see the time, not when the numbers on the clock beside his bed were so blurred, the lights swimming before his eyes like little wriggling eels. The bedroom door stood open, soft light spilling over the threshold, obscured by the figure of a person. A woman.

Shepard.

He blinked, lifting himself onto his elbows as Shepard approached him silently. He could see her eyes, how they glowed against the deep shadows of her face, the wide birth of her hips, the slip of light between her thighs with each step. The mattress sunk beneath her weight as she placed her knee upon it; James was frozen, unable to move, unable to blink. All he could do was stare at her, struck absolutely dumb.

A mess of wild, dark hair tumbled over her shoulders and her palms were unbearably hot as they searched through the sheets to find his thighs. James’s body shuddered at the touch, and he saw her smile, crawling over him until she was able to sit astride his hips. It was only then he realised she was naked - she pushed her hair back over her shoulders to reveal the strong line of her torso and the slope of her breasts, the pale scars that littered her belly, dark nipples, the slight dip of muscle that chased her navel. Her thighs, strong and smooth, drew in his hands, and he couldn’t help but slide his palms up over the curve of them.

A groan lifted from his lips.

“James,” she breathed, her hands slipping up over his abdomen and his chest until her fingers cupped his face. Shepard leaned down until her lips were merely a hair’s breadth from his, so close he could almost  _ taste  _ her, though when he tried to crane his neck to reach her she drew back just out of reach. Never much, just enough. He could feel himself reacting beneath her, his cock swelling against the curve of her backside, against the heat between her legs. Desire beat hot and violent in his ears.

James hissed as Shepard’s nails raked down over his chest. His hands slid up to grab fistfuls of her hips and drag her up along the length of him, sighing at the contact and groaning again when she pushed into the touch and rolled her body in a way that could be only described as absolutely  _ sinful _ .

And then he realised that Shepard did not, in fact, have long hair. Not anymore. Not after Cerberus.

James tore his hands away from Shepard’s hips, shoving her off him and rolling onto his side. His entire body was engulfed in heat; it was a desire so unbearable he could taste it on the back of his tongue. Shepard grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him down onto his back again. She said his name again in that deep, rasping voice of hers, and James began to sweat, torn between riding out the pleasure of the dream and shoving Shepard off him again.

Because this was undoubtedly a dream. It  _ had  _ to be. There was no way Shepard would just… crawl into his bed. Completely naked. Grinding down against his -

His head was spinning. Shepard’s lips were on his neck, down his chest, her hands  _ everywhere  _ to the point it felt like she had many more than two; it was dizzying, the explosion of pleasure deep in his gut, followed by Shepard’s echoing laugh.

And then he woke.

James’s sheets were cold and soaked with sweat. His groin was tight to the point of pain, his skin slick and uncomfortably sticky, his heart hammering in his throat. It was like he’d just woken from a nightmare… except it was a  _ wet dream  _ about some incredible Alliance officer who’d saved the galaxy not once, but twice. A wet dream. About  _ Shepard _ . But… not Shepard. At least not the one he knew - the woman in his dream had been a perversion of Shepard’s old self and her new one, full-figured and beautiful and vicious as a mad dog. James’s entire face and neck flushed with embarrassment and he was utterly, truly grateful for the darkness.

A cold shower helped for the most part, and his sheets weren’t soiled enough to wash, but he couldn’t shake his uneasiness. It only worsened when he finally left the bathroom and found Shepard sitting in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt at the kitchen table, scrolling through the news on a datapad, her hair falling into her eyes. His eyes followed the line of her shoulders and down the gratuitous slopes of her breasts, imagining the pleased, sleepy sigh he’d be rewarded with if he went and pushed his hands up beneath her shirt; he tore his gaze away just as quickly and swallowed down the lump in his throat.

“It’s not like you to sleep in,” Shepard observed without looking up from her datapad. James’s skin prickled at the sound of her voice; the echoes of his dream were still uncomfortably clear.  _ James. James. James. _

“Did you sleep okay?” he asked, neatly dodging a conversation he really didn’t want to have. Shepard did look up, then, sliding her datapad across the table until it lay beside her coffee mug. Her hair was still rumpled and she looked so  _ warm _ , as though she’d only just rolled out of bed herself.

“I did,” she admitted. “Woke up a few times during the night, but obviously nothing bad enough to wake you.”

Guilt prickled on his tongue. Had he been so busy dreaming of her naked that the real Shepard had been left to toss and turn all night? God, he sure hoped not. He picked up the coffee press from the kitchen counter and poured himself out his own cup of coffee, trying to push those thoughts away. Shepard was getting better - he’d taught her how to use the press rather than tinned instant, and her technique was slowly getting more… bearable. He took a seat beside her once the press was empty. For a moment they merely looked at each other, Shepard’s gaze still skewed with sleepiness, and she smiled a smile that was so faint it was almost invisible.

“That’s been happening often,” he told her. “Are the dreams not so bad?”

Shepard laughed. It was a soft, defeated sort of laugh, devoid of mirth, and James’s heart sank. “No, they’re the same. They always feel like new even if I’ve had them tens of times over. I suppose I’m just getting better at dealing with them.” She stared down into the gritty bottom of her coffee cup.

“That’s better than nothing, no?” James took a long drink of his coffee, its bitter heat chasing away the last of his discomfort. “It couldn’t hurt to have a bit of time off, either. To destress and all that.”

That earned another laugh from Shepard, this time genuine, and she finally looked at him again. “Maybe. Not sure how house arrest helps with destressing, though.”

James frowned. “You’re right. We still need that wine.”

And there it was; Shepard grinned into the back of her hand and James’s heart pounded with exhilaration.  _ That  _ was the smile he’d been chasing.

“Anderson is due to drop by either today or tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll see if I can’t persuade him.”

Their day went about as usual after that. James was glad for it. Routine helped him forget the dream, though the ghost of it still lingered at the back of his mind, waiting until he had a spare moment to taunt him with half-baked images of Shepard’s strong waist and dark skin. He pushed himself harder than usual at the gym, too, just to try and get rid of it.

“Make sure you don’t break anything,” Shepard warned him, appearing suddenly beside the punching bag he was laying into. He started, unaware she’d even been there.

“C’mon, Shepard, I play nice!”

Her brow rose. “Do you?”

Reaching out, James used his hand to steady the swinging bag. The marines who frequented the gym had become used to Shepard’s presence by now, though sometimes a few new recruits would stop by just to catch a glimpse of her; nobody knew why she was here or what she’d done, and both Shepard and James agreed that it was probably for the best. Shepard’s entire life for the past three years was wrapped up so tightly in red tape that it was a wonder even James knew as much as he did; the marines didn’t seem to mind, though, especially not when Shepard showed an interest in using the sparring ring.

Anderson’s adjustments to her security cuffs meant she could express her combat expertise within the ring without having her nerves fried; it became something of a freedom for her to challenge partner after partner, mostly recruits who were still wet behind the ears and who looked up to her much in the same way James had. He could see that she didn’t trust herself - Cerberus had given her incredible power, had improved her beyond human capability, and the last thing she wanted to splinter all the bones in her opponent’s body or fry their nervous system,  _ especially  _ not the young recruits. But, in a way, it was a gift - she had to focus on controlling herself. Control over her own faculties was something she sorely needed to get back in touch with. p

It was… jarring to watch. James had grown so used to the aggressive, violent Shepard who was unhinged to the point of madness and who didn’t care about those who stood in her way, even if it meant blowing them into little chunks of bone and flesh. He watched her sparring with a young girl - no older than eighteen, he guessed, though she looked a lot younger - and noticed how each move was measured and tightly controlled. The girl was nimble and fast, but Shepard was faster, her instincts kicking into gear and allowing her to throw the girl down onto the mat in a minute flat.

Watching Shepard fight hand-to-hand was unlike anything James had seen before. He’d spent time around some of the best hand-to-hand combatants the Alliance had to offer, but this was different. Shepard seemed to flicker right in front of his eyes, rippling like sunlight on the water, and yet despite her litheness and her speed there was undeniable solidity in each of her movements. She was a strong, bodily fighter who favoured heavy hits over parrying or dodging, and she threw her body weight with so much force many of her opponents were left winded. She apologised to a number of them after she let her control slip, but nobody had gotten seriously hurt, and every single marine stepped off that mat amazed and with bruises that they were bound to show off to their friends.

“Fight me?” she asked James as he stood in front of that swinging punching bag, drenched with sweat, breathing hard. He looked at her.

“What?”

“Spar with me, James. I want to try it.”

For some reason James had never even entertained the thought of sparring with Shepard. The thought scared him as much as it excited him, and he paused, catching his breath and flinging a glance over to the ring. “...you sure?”

Shepard nodded. “I’ll go easy on you, I promise.”

James laughed at that. “Yeah? You’re on.”

The gym was filled with an almost inperceptible anticipation as James and Shepard stepped onto the mat. Sure, he was a good marine, but Shepard was barely even human. Even James felt nervous; going up against Shepard wasn’t something he’d ever imagined himself doing, but he couldn’t deny it titillated him all the same. She stood lean and strong before him, her eyes never once leaving his face as they took up their stances.

The fight lasted three minutes at most. Shepard came at him like a shot and James could barely keep track of her as she moved; if Shepard was evasive to him as a spectator, then as an opponent she was absolutely impossible to intercept. And yet he managed, somehow, blocking each shattering hit and landing a few solid blows of his own, catching glimpses of her fiery eyes or sweat-slicked skin. His ears pounded with blood, the beat broken only by occasional gasps of breath against his ear, or the press of her heaving chest against his forearm. They were the smallest, wildest of touches, and yet they  _ burned _ , bringing those dreadful memories of James’s dream to the very forefront of his mind again.

James’s breath was knocked clean from his lungs as Shepard kicked his feet out from beneath him, taking advantage of his moment of distraction and sending him crashing down to the mat. She hooked her legs and her arms and soon they were a twist of limbs, James utterly unable to move, his cheek pressed against the mat, Shepard’s weight heavy against his back. He could feel the ridge of her thigh between his legs and tried his best to ignore it.

“Had enough?” she asked, and  _ God she was panting _ , her voice breathless and uneven in his ear. James pressed his face into the mat just to avoid looking at her.

He tapped out without replying.

By the time James got to his feet Shepard had already lifted herself off him; he could still feel her against his back, though, and it made his blood boil. He wasn’t sure why. He’d sparred with a lot of women before - hell, even with downright gorgeous women - but he’d never reacted quite like this. Female marines were just  _ marines _ , after all, and so James had never really felt this degree of heady desire in the ring before. When he fought nothing outside combat existed. But with Shepard… something was different. She was looking at him as he raced through his thoughts, her brow stiff with concern.

“You all right, James?” she asked. “Did I hurt you?” Still out of breath, still red in each place of exposed skin he’d managed to land a hit on.

“I’m good,” he replied, his voice just as breathless as hers. “Just, uh… got some things on my mind, I guess.”

The look Shepard gave him was strange, but she didn’t ask any questions, which James was thankful for. They packed up their things and headed back to the apartment, ignoring the onlookers who pretended not to be watching. James could tell each time Shepard glanced at him. He ignored it.

“You sure you’re okay?” she asked him once they got back to the apartment. He nodded.

“Promise,” he said, though he knew Shepard didn’t believe it.

“All right,” she sighed, slinging her gym towel from over her shoulder. “You use the shower first.”

He was glad to put some space between them. He didn’t look back at Shepard as he made his way towards the bathroom, but he knew she was watching him, most likely concerned. Not surprising, he supposed. He just hoped a cold shower would fix him up.

The hiss of the bathroom door closing behind him was an unexpected comfort. It was privacy, a space where he could grit his teeth and curse at himself without her seeing. He glared at his reflection, huffing out a frustrated breath through his nose before hitting the shower, cranking the water as cold as it would go.

There were bits and pieces of Shepard strewn all over the bathroom. Her shampoo, the sleeve of one of her shirts hanging over the side of their clothes hamper; it was one of the most intimate spaces they shared, James realised, and there was no way to escape her. So… things like this were normal, right? Being confined in close quarters with a woman like this. Shepard wasn’t that bad looking, either -

Shaking his head vigorously, James forced himself under the water, clenching his jaw against the blast that hit his back. He scrubbed himself from head to toe, taking the time to cool his head. The worst thing about this whole gig was that there was nothing to distract himself from Shepard: she was his entire job. So the best he could do was grin and bear it, and God only knew he’d had his fair share of doing that.

After he finished showering James headed back down to the kitchen, stomach growling. He found Shepard on her omni-tool, and upon realising she was talking to someone, he froze.

“Now? All right, I think we can… no, it’s fine.” She gestured to James, and a beat passed between them before Anderson’s voice relayed back over the comms. James relaxed a little. “See you in a bit.” She ended the call, then, minimising her omni-tool and shaking out her arm before looking at James. “Anderson’s dropping by soon. Put some coffee on - I’d rather have him drink your stuff than mine.”

James nearly laughed. He went to put some coffee on, repeating something that had become a habit whenever Anderson came to visit; they never drank it, and by the time Anderson left there were always three mugs of stone-cold coffee sitting somewhere around the apartment, but the routine of it was nice. The smell of dark roast filled the apartment, the scent alone helping the muscles in the back of James’s neck to relax. Seeing Shepard on her omni-tool always filled him with anxiety: something the Alliance officers had stressed was that Shepard’s technological abilities were enhanced by Cerberus to the point she could hack almost anything, harnessing electricity and technology like some sort of warped superpower, and that her cybernetic implants enabled her to function in the same way as a biotic. He’d seen footage of her on Ilium, captured by the CCTV, of the way she pulsed just the same as the biotics, a burst of violent red light amidst a sea of blue. She’d fried systems and mainframes and entire neural pathways, never once discriminating between organic or machine. He’d seen footage of her hacking into YMIR mechs from a hundred yards. For Shepard, weaseling her way into the Alliance mainframe would be child’s play, even with all the lockouts and firewalls they’d placed on it.

But she hadn’t tried. Not yet, anyway. And while James wanted to trust her - he  _ did,  _ he truly did - he couldn’t.

Shepard disappeared into the shower while James got the place ready for Anderson. They’d both become a little sloppy, obviously feeling more at ease with each other now than they had before, and the apartment was strewn with discarded clothing and dirty dishes. It wasn’t a great mess, but it was much worse than their meticulously clean studio when both of them had been too nervous to put a hair out of place. James supposed the mess was encouraging.

“Lieutenant,” Anderson greeted James when he arrived, stopping just inside and looking around the apartment. “Looks lived-in,” he observed with a curt nod that James supposed was a good thing. “Where’s Shepard?”

“Coming!” Shepard’s voice called from the direction of the bathroom, and she appeared only moments later, tugging a shirt down over her head. James caught sight of her abdomen just before she pulled the hem down, and the sight of her shifting muscles and sharp hipbones had something lodging itself in his throat. He looked away. “What’s the hurry?”

“You’ve got a call,” Anderson said, his voice as frazzled as the rest of him. “No time to explain. Come on.”

Sharing a confused glance, Shepard and James followed Anderson as he left the apartment, his pace brisk and purposeful. Neither of them spoke as they walked, the silence heavy and a little concerned. Anderson explained nothing, and James was reminded of when he’d first accompanied him off Omega. They reached one of the conference rooms on the second level of the building, and Anderson let them in without a word. The comms were already working; they were transmitting a long-distance call. A  _ very  _ long-distance call.

“Jane, is that you?”

James glanced at Shepard, who had gone very still, her face blooming in shock. She, in turn, looked at Anderson with an expression of betrayal and utter relief.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said, giving Shepard’s shoulder a conciliatory squeeze. “Call when you’re done so I can close the line.” And then he left, just like that, without a single word or explanation to James.

Once the doors slid closed, Shepard approached the terminal, peering at the hologram. And then she smiled a shy, almost sheepish smile, rubbing a hand over the back of her neck. “Yeah, it’s me. Good to hear your voice, mom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm like 98% sure something dramatic happens like. every single chapter from here on out


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i had like 20k words of this fic stored on a usb that i lost one day and couldn't for the life of me find for like??? three months  
> but i found it the other day in my purse and i almost cried from relief we are BACK IN ACTION

Captain Hannah Shepard was, from what James could see of her, very much like her daughter. She was older, nearing sixty, and was unusually tall. She stood just like her daughter, too, with the same upturned chin and proud, squared shoulders. The hologram flickered with static every now and again, but it was clear enough, and James noticed the distinctly youthful shine to her eyes. Her hair was wrapped in a brightly patterned scarf and James was immediately struck by the familiarity of her face; it was hawk-like, sharp, giving off the impression that she could see everything around her all at once. Just like Shepard. It was a face that bore through photographs and evaded description, fierce and golden and heroic.  _ Just like Shepard _ .

James knew as much about Hannah Shepard as any Alliance soldier did: she was one of the best fighter pilots in the entire fleet and had spent her life expanding the galaxy’s frontiers. She’d been on the first team of humans who had gone to the Citadel after the First Contact War, in which she had also played a critical part. Mother and daughter, both something of a legend, reunited; Shepard junior was the dark side to Shepard senior, a moon concealed behind the brightness of the sun, yet just as powerful, just as revered.

It felt, to James, overwhelmingly bitter.

The moment Hannah spoke James backed up until he stood just by the door, unable to leave and yet feeling like he was eavesdropping. Instead he watched Shepard’s back and took comfort in the familiar movement of her muscles.

“A little bird told me you’ve been stirring up trouble,” Hannah said dryly. Shepard shrugged. The movement came off stiff.

“Only the necessary kind.”

“They’re calling you mad, Jane.”

“I know.”

Silence. James shifted uncomfortably.

“Why did you call me, mom?” Hearing Shepard say that word -  _ mom _ \- was unbelievably strange. Shepard wasn’t the sort of person to  _ have  _ a mother. She was more given over to tragedy, and as far as James knew she didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. For Shepard to have a mother she must have once been a child, weak and vulnerable. It was an impossible thought. Shepard, a battered old war veteran, was as far from a child as anybody could possibly be.

“Because like it or not, you’re my  _ child _ , Jane. I care about you. Hearing you’d died back when the  _ Normandy  _ got blown to hell fried my nerves like you wouldn’t believe, and though I’m glad I eventually got to find out you were alive, I never got the chance to talk to you properly. Sounds to me like you’ve gotten yourself into even more hot water since then, too.” Hannah spent a moment merely looking at Shepard, eyes roving her daughter’s face and gaunt body, brows knitting together in concern. “You look worse than when I last saw you.”

Shepard shrugged again. “A lot happened. But you know that, don’t you?”

With a sly smile, Hannah nodded. “Yes. I was briefed. And, I admit, I followed your activity quite closely before you turned yourself in. That message you sent before you hit the Omega 4 relay almost did me in, you know.”

Yes, Shepard remembered that. The message she’d sent to her mother before her team hit the relay to God-knows-where had been the hardest message she’d ever had to write. In it she had poured her heart, her apologies and her regrets and everything she’d been too afraid to say. Nearly forty years of unspoken thoughts had gone into that message, and yet she had to write it - she couldn’t rest until she did. Nobody knew if they’d make it back. The Illusive Man had called it a suicide mission: it was self-explanatory. She had sent only two of those messages: one to her mother, and one to Ashley Williams.

“I want to believe your theories about these Reapers, you know,” Hannah continued. She shifted, propping out her hip and leaning her weight against one leg, just like Shepard would. “But it’s… vague. I need to ask, Jane, you know I do. It’s my duty as a mother. Are you...?”

“I’m not making them up.” Shepard’s words were accompanied by an irritated frown, and she scratched at the twitching muscles along the side of her neck. “You know I’m not.”

There was a brief pause between them. Hannah was concerned: it showed plainly in her face, in the way her brows scrunched together and her lips turned down, in the little wrinkle in her cheek and the way she reached up to smooth the fabric against her hair. The hologram was blue, naturally, but James could practically see the gold of her eyes. “I did some digging,” she admitted. “About these Collectors. And if they are real - which they undoubtedly are - then these Reapers must exist also. It’s only logical.”

But there was something else. Some elephant in the room, something unsaid that was weighing on them both, that was stopping Shepard from looking her mother in the eye. James had no idea what it was, but with the way his heart had begun to pound in his chest, he had a feeling it was something important.

“The relay, Jane? Were the Reapers just an excuse? Did you -,”

Shepard said something, quite suddenly, in a loud and sharp voice. It snapped Hannah’s words off like a twig and her expression immediately broke open in shock. James recognised the sound of it even if the words were foreign to his ears - Shepard spoke in tongues, the same tongues she would speak in her sleep, the same jolting words. He tried - and failed - to swallow his surprise. He wondered if Hannah understood. She did, evidently, and her face darkened. She looked… pained.

“How could I  _ not  _ bring it up?” Hannah’s voice rose, and she said something in the same language - whatever weird language it was - as Shepard had. It sounded different coming from her lips, yet entirely the same. Shepard eventually met her gaze. “The batarians were never our friends, Jane, yours least of all. All they have done is take and take. They -,” Quite suddenly Hannah broke off, her eyes flicking from Shepard’s face to James. He nearly started beneath those sharp eyes of hers.

“It’s all right,” Shepard murmured, her brow knitted. Her mind was elsewhere, roaming her memories. Hannah licked her lips - nervous, James noted - and let her gaze linger on him for a second longer before turning her attention back to her daughter and lowering her voice. Here, again, she spoke in that strange and rolling language, and James found himself straining his ears to listen even though he knew he couldn’t understand.

“Don’t,” Shepard croaked, quite suddenly looking as though the life had been drained from her. She leaned against the edge of the conference table, her body sapped of strength, her eyes closed. “Don’t… talk about that. I didn’t do any of this because of some personal vendetta. I did it because if I hadn’t sent that asteroid into that relay, we wouldn’t be able to stand here having this conversation right now.”

Hannah was silent for a long few moments, her eyes hard and unforgiving. Shepard stared back without flinching, the scars on her jaw jumping as she ground her teeth.

“I didn’t come here to be lectured,” Shepard continued, her voice much quieter. “I did what I had to do. I regret some of the lengths I had to go to, but the job is done.”

There was something very sad in Hannah’s face as she looked at Shepard, as though she wished she could reach out and touch her, or to hold her in her arms, to console her. She could see that Shepard was hurting and all of a sudden she felt her own shortcomings as a mother rear their ugly head inside her. All those times she should have been there for her child, as a teenager, as an  _ adult,  _ she hadn’t been.

“I know I haven’t been the best mother to you all these years, Janie,” Hannah began quietly. “But if you need anything -,”

“Spare it,” Shepard interrupted icily. Hannah lowered her eyes. “You’ve got your own life to live and God forbid I get in the way of it.” She smiled, but the smile held no love.

“I love you, Janie, I do.” They were pained words; each of them pricked at Shepard’s skin and sent her guts twisting and tying themselves into knots. She grimaced, remaining silent, clenching her jaw and grinding her teeth the way she always did when she was stressed. James, at least, had picked up on that habit a long time ago.

And then she reached out and hit the dial pad, shutting the hologram off and filling the room with silence.

“I love you too.” The words Hannah didn’t hear, broken, choked from a throat drawn tight by grief. James had grown incredibly uncomfortable. He’d intruded, he knew, upon something very private, something he wasn’t meant to see. But Shepard hadn’t kicked him out - she’d told her mother to speak even when she knew James could hear. He had no idea what that implied.

When Shepard finally pulled herself together, she turned to James, who bristled at the sight of her.

“Call Anderson.”

James was glad to get out of that room. The air had grown black and heavy with tension that lingered even after Shepard had shut off the line, willfully disobeying Anderson’s orders in order to do so. He found Anderson waiting in the hallway outside, datapad in hand, and his expression was overtaken by alarm as he saw James’s face. “Did something happen?”

James merely gestured towards Shepard, who had exited the room as well, her face drawn and pale. She shook her head. “Pointless,” she murmured. “She never listens to anyone.”

Anderson’s grimace was sympathetic; he gave her elbow a squeeze. “She was worried about you, Jane. She didn’t stop hounding me until I agreed to organise a call.”

The pace they took walking back to the main building was far slower than the one they’d previously taken. Ponderous, almost - Shepard’s face, at least, was still crunched up in thought.  _ What  _ she was thinking, though, James couldn’t be sure. He looked across at Anderson, who merely shook his head. Oh, yeah. There was some kind of history there.

And what, too, had they said? Curiosity clawed at James’s inside, scraping furiously, but he dared not ask. Not yet, anyway. What language was it? Where had she learned it? Why did they speak it, then, while they otherwise spoke in ordinary English? Hearing Shepard talk to her mother had brought many dark things to the surface; he could see it in Shepard’s face. He thirsted after those secrets. It beat at his throat, hot and dry, making him want to hold her down and pluck them from her head with his bare hands.  _ Who are you, Shepard? What secrets and stories do you hide? _

Shepard remained in the same odd, pensive state for the rest of the day. Lying on the couch, she ruminated in silence as the afternoon sun began its slow crawl across the floor of the living area. Unsure what to do, James settled for keeping out of her way. But he watched her, and he knew that she could sense it.

“Shit. I need a drink.”

They were the first words he’d heard from her since she’d spoken to her mother, and somehow they were the absolutely  _ last  _ ones he expected. James, who had only just drawn himself a glass of water from the sink, stared at her in surprise.

“I don’t think alcohol is allowed under your, er… terms.”

Shepard gave him a crooked little grimace as she hauled herself up from the couch. “Maybe,” she said as she opened her omni-tool. She hit in a few numbers, waited for the dial tone to ring out, and then spoke. “Anderson, I need something for my nerves.”

Anderson, who had opened her call almost instantly, made a disgruntled noise on the other end of the line; Shepard winked at James. After sounding suitably frustrated, Anderson replied.

“I’ll sort something out.”

Just like that, Shepard closed her omni-tool and flopped back down onto the couch again, basking in the sun like a cat. But she was still troubled - James could see as much in the set of her brow and the slight wrinkle of her forehead. Ah, fuck. She always looked so lovely in the sun.

Waltzing over to the living area, James leaned against the back of the couch, looking down over where her prone form lay, one arm thrown across her eyes. “Let’s take a walk, Shepard. You look like you could use the fresh air.”

Shepard took her arm away from her eyes and met his gaze with a glimmer of relief.

 

* * *

While Shepard wasn’t allowed off the base, her good behaviour meant that she was now allowed to venture outside the main building provided she had James with her. The fresh air came at the recommendation of her psychiatrists, who stressed the benefits of the outdoors, and this newfound freedom was a rare sliver of good news for Shepard. The gardens were well-kept and fragrant with summer blooms that spilled out of their planters and across the sidewalks, the grass cut and trees neatly trimmed. Even the soldiers had grown used to her presence to some degree, now, and their lingering gazes didn’t appear to bother Shepard as much as they used to.

Vancouver was visible from the base’s vantage point. It was close to the city - close enough for the sound of traffic to carry on the wind, but not so close as to be overshadowed by the skyscrapers or lanes of shuttles. The air always moved, alive and fragrant, and the sheer vivacity of it all was enough to lift Shepard’s spirits most of the time.

She and James walked along the northern side of the base, their path dictated by a narrow avenue lined with poplars. People rarely came out this way; the gardens along the north and southwest sides of the base were mostly just for show. They were far away from everything.

Each step relaxed her. The moment they’d emerged into the sunshine, James had felt some of the tension in Shepard’s muscles seep away; she’d stood there, face turned towards the sun, and sighed.

Even now, weeks after being assigned to Shepard’s care, James was still nervous around her. She seemed more like a  _ patient  _ than a  _ criminal _ , at times, standing willowy and sickly with the refraction of death in her eyes. In the sun, however, she glowed; her skin regained its colour, her eyes their depth, her body its strength. He learned that Shepard liked the sun and the way it felt against her skin.

“You sounded mad with her. Your mom, I mean.” James wanted to eat his words as soon as he said them - there was a line, he reminded himself, that should never be crossed. He kept forgetting about it. Shepard… something about her made him forget. But this? Asking Shepard about her family, with whom she quite obviously was not on the best terms? That wasn’t clever. Even James knew that. “Feel free to tell me to shut up if I’m out of line, by the way.”

Shepard, however, smiled a thin-lipped smile and spared him little more than a brief glance. “It’s all right. You know about her, right? Hannah Shepard.”

“Well… yeah. Pretty much every Alliance soldier does. Captain Hannah Shepard, best fighter pilot in the navy, one of the first humans to enter council space and set foot on the Citadel during the First Contact War, et cetera.”

He didn’t tell her than he’d merely connected the dots - he knew, like most marines, that Hannah and Shepard were related. He’d connected them as two legends, an inheritance of military skill, but had never really thought about them as  _ people _ . To think of Shepard as a child was strange enough; thinking of  _ Hannah Shepard  _ being motherly towards her to any degree was even stranger.

Shepard laughed blithely. “The one and only. I’m not… well. The Alliance has always been my mother’s one true love. She isn’t very…”

“Motherly?”

Shepard nodded. “She never has been. I don’t blame her for a lot of things, but…” It was then her voice softened and the unforgiving hardness of her face began to slip. She was hurt; she’d been hurt by her mother’s absence for a long, long time. She looked at him. She  _ showed _ him. James was so astounded that she would reveal something like that to him that he couldn’t find a reply, and the two lapsed back into silence.

Now they walked side-by-side and James knew Shepard was still thinking, her brain ticking like clockwork. And, oh, what he wouldn’t give to get even the smallest of peeks inside her head: he couldn’t even begin to imagine what sorts of things must be hidden away in there. The genius, the tactical brilliance, and not to mention the memories.

As though sensing his train of thought, Shepard spoke.

“The psychs say that talking about my tours would help me process them better.”

It was a strange admission. James blinked in surprise. “Okay. I’ll listen.”

“You know what I’m famous for, James?”

_ Of course I do, _ he thought dryly. “Akuze.”

“Right. Even Elysium and Torfan can’t hold a candle to Akuze: killing a maw like that seems to be something of a big deal.” She cleared her throat and refused to look at him. “The first thing you need to know about Akuze is that it was a prime colonisation prospect and was highly valued by the Alliance. That’s why they sent in fifty of us when the comms went dark; all transmissions were completely scrambled to the point where it messed with the shuttles’ nav systems, and they had to drop us a few miles from the colony.” She grimaced. “The first night we camped out and were attacked by a whole clutch of juvenile thresher maws - they wiped out half of us by morning. After that we pushed through to the colony, though it turns out killing all the juvies made mama pretty mad. By the time I got to the colony everyone else was dead, except a corporal named Toombs. Turns out the distress signal was automated! Nobody was even fucking there. And Toombs died, leaving me to almost die of exposure and blow that maw up all by my damn self.”

Her words came fast and cutting, so brisk that James almost though she was lying. They paused, then, shrouded by the shade of one of the poplars, sunlight speckled over Shepard’s skin. She frowned. “I’m not feeling much better.”

“That’s because you’re not letting anything out,” he told her. “You’re saying words but you’re not  _ feeling _ ‘em, Shepard!” And it was true - everything she'd said was delivered as curtly and as emotionlessly as an accounting report.

She stopped abruptly, her eyes riveted straight ahead. Her jaw was clenched and after a moment she looked at him, eyes ablaze. At first he thought she was angry at him - but it wasn’t anger, whatever she was feeling. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Wiping his hands on his thighs, James decided to do exactly what he promised not to do.

“I was posted in the Terminus Systems a while back,” he said. “On a colony. It was attacked by Blood Pack mercs and… I know what it’s like, Shepard. To see everyone die. To walk through an empty colony and know that there was jack shit you could have done, but you still wish you could’ve done  _ something _ .” He wiped his hands again. His palms were slick with sweat, his eyes unable to drag themselves from Shepard’s face as her eyebrows rose in surprise, lips parting. “So talk. Talk, because I know a little bit of what it’s like - hell, you can even cry if you want to. I don’t care.”

And, somehow, Shepard knew he didn’t.

At his confession Shepard was caught in the painful limbo between surprise and overwhelming affection. It was the first time she’d truly felt her budding regard for James Vega, but in that moment it took such a monumental leap that she sucked in a breath through her teeth and  _ smiled _ , because here was a marine with a close-cropped mohawk and tattoos, with muscles and height and  _ brawn _ , who was looking her dead in the eye and encouraging her to open up about her past. To cry about it. To let out everything she’d been so scared of revealing. When Shepard reached out and took his face into her hands he thought she was going to kiss him. Part of him - damn it! - hoped for it. Her eyes were soft, gold and liquid like honey, and she smiled the faintest of smiles.

“You’re too good for me, James Vega.”

His skin warmed beneath her hands; he hadn’t been this close to her since he’d cut her hair the night before her trial. From this distance he could smell her, the salt and the steel and the warmth she seemed to retain, always. It took everything he had not to lean into her touch.

Then the moment was over. Just like that, Shepard took her hands away, flooding James’s face with cold air. She stepped back, turned her eyes from him, and continued walking.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey fellas i''m piss drunk and honestly? thank go d because ive been so busy i wouldn't have had time to post this otherwise  
> my job is kicking my ass... four days a week... capitalism.... fuck that
> 
> shoutout to @deep-one who leaves the absolute best comments... i love you forever <3

The bottle of rum appeared miraculously on their kitchen table the next afternoon. There was a note underneath, written out in neat, closely-set print. Shepard read it quickly before folding it and tucking it into her bra.

“I have to admit,” Shepard said as she inspected the label, one hand gripped tight around the neck of the bottle. “Anderson’s always been efficient.” James watched, amused, as she tapped a nail against the glass. “Didn’t go cheap, either.”

“I knew he had a soft spot for you, but this… this has gotta be nepotism.” James couldn’t help it - Anderson had agreed to this far too quickly. Suspiciously quickly, actually, considering the repercussions of getting caught. Shepard didn’t get angry at him, though, even when he expected her to. She merely chuckled and turned the bottle over in her hands.

“He owes me a few favours,” she replied. “I think he’s trying to make it up to me.”

That, at least, made sense. Shepard and Anderson’s relationship was built on give-and-take; they always pushed favours back and forth. Always had done.

Neither James nor Shepard had spoken about the change in their relationship. It was private territory and both Shepard and James were nervous about encroaching too far upon the other’s personal space. James was worried about setting her off, knowing that reminding her of the wrong thing could turn her mood and could bring her psychosis back out of his shell. He, above all else, wanted to spare her of that - even thinking about it brought memories of her episode to the forefront of his mind, hot and burning like a brand, and he’d see her shivering and shaking and vomiting, crouched like a child in a corner. Despite that, though, something about their conversation had made a very deep crack in Shepard’s facade, and she found herself smiling a little more often and dreaming a little bit less.

She thought about what James had said during their walk in the gardens when she’d told him of Akuze: about how saying words did nothing, that she had to  _ feel _ them, that they had to mean something. She thought about  _ what  _ she’d told him, too, of Akuze. She’d told him without really  _ telling  _ him anything. She hadn’t told him of the panic she’d felt as the ground rumbled beneath her feet, nor the aching thirst as the sun beat down upon her; she hadn’t told him of the way she’d stripped bodies of their clothes to bind her wounds against the sand; she hadn’t told him of the terror, which she’d been sure would stop her heart entirely, as she’d faced the gaping mouth of that thresher maw. She’d told him none of it, because that pain had been kept too close for too long, and to part herself from it was like the tearing open of a wound. Even her words had come out by force of habit. It was a tired story, told to doctors and fresh-faced recruits. Whoever asked, really.

And James - he’d told her something of his past, too. He’d spent time in the Terminus Systems battling criminals just like she had, though that had been many years ago. It had been a fraction of the whole story, she knew, and she was curious for the rest of it. But asking… she couldn’t. Shepard recognised that a part of James was injured, hurting in the same way she was. A common bond.

She didn’t regret the way she’d touched him, either. It was a little embarrassing, perhaps, to have shown such tenderness. But she knew James wouldn’t make fun of her for it, nor would he go and run his mouth. Against all her better judgement and street smarts, she trusted him. Damn it. She trusted him.

It was a honeyed Cuban malt, the bottle decorated with a red wax seal and a postcard-pretty image of the sea. Instead of opening it right away, however, Shepard placed in in one of the kitchenette cabinets and, with the glance of a smile sent in James’s direction, said, “Not until we need it.”

The bottle remained in that cabinet for the next few days - they were days Shepard spent in a pensive sort of silence, and she occupied most of her time walking in slow circles about the apartment, or walking with James out in the grounds. Even though she would never admit it, she spent a great deal of that time thinking about  _ him _ . Mostly what he’d said to her - she knew he was right, too. Shepard was not a stupid woman by any stretch. In fact, she was probably one of the smartest women in the whole damn navy, but James had an odd talent of observation that she couldn’t seem to understand, no matter how hard she tried. Here he was, jacked with muscle and with hair clipped into a mohawk, with tattoos and a fresh scar stretched over his nose, and yet he was thoughtful and kind and much smarter than he really let on.

Her mistake probably wasn’t the first of its kind. How many people had done the same thing? How many people had failed to look past his appearance and realise the person he  _ actually  _ was? Granted, he did a very good job at hiding his sensitivity, not that it was a particularly difficult task: all he needed to do was stand there and frown. But with Shepard… well. There was something to be said for having to live with another person. They could only remain strangers for so long. But Shepard, slowly, was coming to terms with that.

It didn’t bother her so much anymore. Being around James felt normal. Thinking about him outside the context of her arrest didn’t seem so wrong, nor so unusual, as it once did. If they’d met any other way, she honestly believed they’d get along like a house on fire. She was more comfortable with that closeness, now, but sometimes it still frightened her. She had refused to open that door for so long - it only gave way to inevitable heartbreak. But James might as well have been armed with a good shoulder and a crowbar for all the good it did. He was growing on her. Simple as that.

He didn’t bother her. He  _ never  _ bothered her. He let her pace and ruminate and pick at her scars, moseying along at his own pace while still somehow always being in-time with hers. No matter what she did, Shepard kept him in the shadows of her peripherals, though no longer because of suspicion. He was a comfort, now. Looking at him made her anxiety settle.

And she kept thinking - damn it, she couldn’t keep her mind from it! - of their walk and their conversation, where she’d told him about Akuze and he had kicked down every single wall she had ever built up around herself.

_ You’re saying things, but you don’t mean them. _

He was right.

Shepard thought back, again and again, to the moment she had reached out and held his face in her hands. His skin had been so much warmer than she’d expected. His skin had been slightly rough beneath her fingers, jaw in need of a shave, ridges and bumps of invisible scars spreading like veins against her palms. She had held him, and for the briefest of seconds she saw right into his soul, and had felt something very large and very painful begin to rise in her chest.

Even now her hands still pinpricked at the memory.

Sometimes she would catch him looking at her. She knew he did it often, even if she didn’t see it all the time - whatever tech Cerberus had filled her with made her hyper-aware of her surroundings, so of  _ course  _ she knew. But she didn’t blame him for it, not for one second. She looked like a freak, what with her scars and glowing eyes. She was the Alliance’s answer to Lucifer: cast from the gates of heaven, disgraced and useless.

She wondered if he thought of her, too.

The quiet drag of their days was interrupted quite suddenly when Anderson appeared at their apartment unannounced. He looked nervous - though these days he always seemed to look nervous - though he didn’t appear to be angry, which Shepard took as a good sign. James went to make coffee like he usually did, but Anderson stopped him, knowing full well they wouldn’t drink it.

“Shepard, sit down. You’re not going to like this.”

She sat. Anderson sat down across the small table and folded his hands upon its surface.

“Admiral Hackett is coming to see you in two days’ time.”

Silence stretched tense between them. James, who hadn’t yet moved from the kitchen to join them, paused to look from Anderson’s face to Shepard’s. There was some sort of mutual understanding going on that he wasn’t part of, and at this point trying to swing in on it seemed like a very bad idea. So he stayed there, leaning against the counter, watching as Shepard worked her jaw in irritation.

“What does he want with me?” When Shepard’s voice came out it was hoarse and very quiet.

Anderson shrugged. “Beats me. Though it’s about time he came to see you, in my opinion.” He lowered his voice, then, leaning forwards, his hands shifting as though he wanted to reach across the table and take hers into his own. “I wanted to be the one to tell you.”

Shepard glanced down at her hands where they lay in her lap. Hackett. The news had a headache already burgeoning behind her eyes. Reaching up, she rubbed them a little before pressing the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “Thanks for the warning. I appreciate it.”

Standing, Anderson reached across the table to squeeze Shepard’s shoulder. He lowered his voice, too, bending down so their foreheads almost touched. Shepard’s gaze remained anchored on the table. “He cares about you, Shepard.”

She didn’t reply.

A heavy tension was left in Anderson’s wake, as though a black fog had filled the apartment, clinging to everything it touched and weighing the whole place down. It made James uneasy. Shepard sat staring at her hands for at least half an hour after Anderson left, and James avoided disturbing her as best she could. Would Shepard ever escape being sprung like this? All James wanted to do was put her in his pocket and take her someplace quiet and safe - a thought he was growing used to, now, considering how often it crossed his mind.

“He doesn’t care about me,” Shepard mumbled.

It took James a few moments to realise she was talking to him. Hesitantly, he went over to the table and sat down opposite her. The chair had grown cold, Anderson’s presence forgotten. Shepard’s hands were clasped upon the tabletop, and now that James was closer, he could see the muscles in her forearms twitching, and the restless little shudder in her fingers.

“My… my mom worked with him during the First Contact War. They’ve been friends for years. Him and my mom and Anderson. I’ve known him for  _ so long _ and I thought he - that he’d -,” Shepard’s voice broke, then, and James had to clench his fists against the urge to reach out and comfort her, somehow. “He knew this would happen.”

“That what would happen?” James kept his voice low. Quiet. Only when he finally spoke did Shepard raise her eyes.

“This. All of this.”

“Shepard, hey. Talk to me.” James extended a hand, lying it palm-up on the table. He couldn’t touch her. He couldn’t offer her comfort. But this - this was something he  _ could  _ give. A simple gesture of receptiveness. She gazed at his hand, then gave him a ghostly smile, her eyes crinkling with gratitude. There was a look, there - one James hadn’t seen before.

“There’s nothing to talk about. Destroying that relay is one of the things I don’t regret.” She turned, then, to gaze across the room and out the west-facing window, narrowing her eyes against the glare of the sky. “Last time I saw Hackett was before the handover. I don’t know what he could want with me.”

_ Maybe he wants to apologise. Maybe he just wants to talk. Maybe he wants to see how you’re doing _ . James said nothing. Shepard was inconsolable.

Sometimes - like  _ this _ \- James was reminded just how completely out of his depth he was. Sure, he could try and trick himself into thinking he’d come to know her, but he didn’t, not really. He  _ hated  _ it. But what he hated even more was how these people had hurt her, and yet felt no remorse whatsoever. They’d used her as a tool, and now that she had outlived her usefulness they were content with locking her away.

Shepard leaned forwards, folding her arms on the table. “You don’t need to stress for me, James.” A pause, then. “He’s going to want to see me alone. What happened with the relay was sensitive. But… I want you to be there. I  _ need  _ you to be there.”

Their voices were low. Drawn. Heads leaned close together in conspiration; neither of them were concerned about suspicion, now. There were hearts on the table.

“...Why?” James didn’t understand it. She’d known Hackett most of her life. She’d known James for less than a few months.

“I don’t think I can trust myself to hold it together. It’s your  _ job _ to do these things, James.”

But she knew it wasn’t just a job. Not anymore.

“All right. If you’re sure.”

It was worth it for the smile she gave him. Small, genuine, and incredibly thankful. And then she leaned away from him, taking with her the enchanting scent of the ocean and warm skin, leaving James to wonder just what the hell he’d gotten himself into in taking this job on in the first place.

Shepard’s request left him rattled nonetheless; when they’d first met she would rather have torn him to shreds than trust him. She saw his supervision as an insult. Now… well. She’d come to rely on it, almost. James had gone from being a reminder of her humiliation and disgrace to being the very centre of her world. He was the only person she could trust, whether either of them liked it or not.

 

++

 

Bad weather kept them indoors for the most part of the next two days. Shepard and James visited the gym for a few hours each day, but being shut-in was taking its toll on Shepard’s stress, especially with Hackett’s impending visit. She found herself unable to sleep, consumed with the violent memories of Kenson’s team at Project Base. Everything was so… warped. Wrong. Nothing should have gone the way it did - even though Kenson had tried to kill her, Shepard still didn’t believe she deserved to die. The woman had a brilliant mind, and if it wasn’t for the artefact that had indoctrinated her and her entire team, she might have been an enormous asset.  _ None  _ of it was right.

And James, oh, James couldn’t stop thinking about her. How she’d asked him to go with her, to  _ help  _ her, to support her when she admitted she wouldn’t be able to support herself… what did it  _ mean _ ? He wanted to analyse it. He wanted to believe she meant something by it, something close, something personal. But he knew, too, that Shepard was never simple, and he’d probably get the wrong idea and it would all end in tears. So he tried not to think about it, and instead focussed on worrying about Shepard’s relationship with Hackett. What did Hackett want? He was an admiral. Surely he had better things to do than visiting criminals.

If anything, it made James mad. To see the effect Hackett’s visit was having on Shepard was like watching a spool of thread unwind; for all the steps Shepard had taken forwards, she seemed to be backtracking fast. She stopped eating. She stopped sleeping. The apartment remained still and silent without her music, and James couldn’t bring himself to interrupt the dreadful air of…  _ whatever  _ it was that hung over them. The black cloud didn’t lift. Not until a clerk, accompanied by a handful of armed soldiers, appeared at ten o’clock on an overcast Saturday morning to escort Shepard and James to one of the meeting rooms.

Once they stood alone in the room, soldiers stationed outside, James reached out and squeezed her wrist. Shepard shot him an alarmed glance, but the tension in her shoulders relaxed a little, and she moved to sit at the long, bare table. She looked oddly small like that, James thought as he stood behind her, just close enough to let her know she was there.

And then the door opened.

Shepard didn’t stand. She didn’t salute. She merely fixed the admiral with her unsettling eyes and remained silent as he approached them. Hackett removed his hat and held it against his chest; he and Shepard looked at each other in complete silence, their eyes telling far more than words ever could.

“It’s been a long few months, Shepard,” Hackett said as he sat. He glanced at James, but thankfully made no remark.

Shepard did not reply.

“I know you’re angry,” Hackett tried again. “But you were the best person to -,”

“I’m just an excuse for you, aren’t I?” It was the first time Shepard had spoken to him, and Hackett very nearly flinched at how different her voice sounded. His brow darkened.

“You know it was necessary, Shepard. You… were more suited to the task.” There was so much left unsaid.  _ You were already a criminal. You were already mad, crazy, insane; nobody would be surprised if you blew a star system apart. You were easier. You were the perfect excuse. _

Shepard’s smile was thin and full of hurt. “Glad to be of service, Admiral.”

Hackett’s eyes dropped to the tabletop. He said nothing. The utter betrayal in her voice was not lost on him; he could feel it like the pinch of fingernails against his skin, digging deep,  _ hurting _ . Hackett had always believed in sacrifice for the greater good. Now he wasn’t so sure. Questions began to rise like boiling water in his chest. Scalding. “For what it’s worth, Jane, I’m sorry.”

Shepard let out a harsh laugh at that, and James bristled at the sound, squeezing his hands together behind his back to stop himself from reaching out and touching her. “Sorry! That window of opportunity closed a long time ago.” She folded her arms atop the table, leaning forwards, her voice pitching lower. “I do your dirty work, get branded enemy of the galaxy, and then you throw me in a brig and wait like sitting ducks for the Reapers to line you up and shoot you down.”

The muscles in Hackett’s face rippled, his eyes narrowing as he tried to keep himself under control. The deep scar across his face wrinkled and danced with the effort. “I didn’t come here to lecture you, Jane. I came here to see how much of you is still left, and from what I can see, that’s not a damn lot.” He appraised her, then, his frown deepening as he did so, discontent warping into concern. It reminded her faintly of when she’d been a teenager and he’d catch her after sleepless nights running around with the other kids on the station. “Shepard, have you been eating?”

She bared her teeth in a cruel smile. She was well aware of the way the spools of her spine jutted out between her titanium plates, how her muscle had began to waste away and her bones began to show. She’d been getting better, but it still wasn’t enough. The longer Hackett looked at her the more disconcerted he became.

“ _ Jane _ .”

“What use am I?” she bit out. “I can’t eat, I can barely sleep, I’m stuck in this fucking  _ box  _ while the galaxy as we know it is coming to an end. I’m past being useful, Steven, so why not just be merciful for once and put me out of my misery?” Hackett heard her voice crack and her breath shudder and he  _ worried _ , because nothing had affected Shepard this deeply for years, and to see her in such distress never failed to make him uneasy. The Shepard he knew was never phased like this: she dealt with things cooly and calmly and with an iron fist. But this… she was all fire, now, unbridled and uncontrolled. And the worst part was knowing he’d contributed so much to her downfall.

“Pull yourself together,” he said. “We can’t just let you go, Shepard, you know that, not after what you did. Anderson and I are doing what we can to sort it all out, but you certainly haven’t made things easy for us.”

Shepard was silent. Her head pounded, blood drumming against her ears so loudly she could barely hear anything else; Hackett was content merely watching her. Those eyes of his always had a way of making her feel twelve years old again. “Yeah. Nothing quite like being a goddamn fucking  _ tool _ .”

Every damn word out of her mouth drove the dagger in deeper. But she was right, damn it, she was always right. He grimaced, rubbing a tired hand over his face before he leaned forwards and bowed his head, and Shepard was finally able to see just how much all of this had worn on him. Hesitation lasted only a moment before he reached across the table and took Shepard’s hand in his own, squeezing her fingers. Sadness lanced through her like a gunshot. “I do care about you, Jane.”

“You have a funny way of showing it.”

There was silence, again. This time it wasn’t tense with anger, though, but instead with mutual sadness. Hackett thought of Hannah Shepard, back when they worked together in the First Contact War, how much she’d gone through to bring Shepard into the new galaxy. To protect her. He remembered how she’d screamed at him to go back to her home station and save  _ Janie, my Janie! _ How he’d been the one who found her on a cruiser crawling with turian militants, how he’d been the one to drag her from a ventilation shaft and away from the gunfire; how he’d seen little Jane Shepard pick up a gun and shoot a turian right through the eye socket, her hands steady and her face set like stone. Nine years old, she’d been. He thought of the pain the little family had been through when Hannah or her husband were deployed, sometimes both at the same time. He thought of how she’d trusted the person she loved most in the world to him - little Jane Shepard, wide-eyed and with her mother’s same unruly hair - to watch over. To protect. And yet here they were, Shepard suffering immensely from events  _ he’d  _ pushed her into. He reached out, taking her hand - he remembered that hand when it was as big as his palm, sticky with the remnants of Blasto candies - and was glad when she didn’t pull away.

Hackett passed his hand over her wrist, over the cuff. “How did we get here, Jane?”

Shepard shook her head, helpless. Nothing she could say could ever answer that.

They talked some more, voices quiet and heads bent low, Shepard’s hand still in his. It was times like these where sometimes she just needed reassurance, even though she was a grown woman who’d already saved the galaxy twice, and Hackett knew that. She was angry - angry at Cerberus, angry at the Council, at the Alliance, at herself, at  _ him _ . But she was exhausted, too, and even her fury was hard to maintain.

It made Hackett incredibly sad to see her like this. Sure, it was a shame she was a galactic terrorist who’d been working with one of the most dangerous rogue groups the Alliance had ever known, but that wasn’t what worried him. He didn’t doubt Shepard’s loyalty, not for a second - or at least he  _ hadn’t  _ until he’d started getting reports of her movements. Seeing her now was the final nail in that coffin.

Something had happened to Shepard - something bad. Whatever Cerberus had done to her, aside from bringing her back from the dead, had changed something deep inside her and brought out her very worst qualities, erasing her sense of moral righteousness, a force that had held her so strongly ever since she was old enough to distinguish between right and wrong. He received report after report about her as the Alliance chased each movement she made, each time even more horrendous than the last. Shepard was focussed on a single goal: taking out the Collectors. And she would do anything it took to achieve it, even if she had to sacrifice innocent lives in return, or turn to express violence. Those reports had made him sick to his stomach; the surveillance footage was worse. She didn’t look herself anymore, even aside from the shaved head and implants. Her face - her eyes - had changed.

“I know you can get through this,” he told her, taking her other hand and holding them tight. It was all he could do to try and coax out the Shepard he knew. Shepard bowed her head, fingers trembling, and cried.

He could see how much she was hurting. The line of loved ones she’d lost throughout her life was long and still continued to grow; now she had the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians on her hands, regardless of the bigger picture, and the cracks had started to show. Hackett watched as Shepard pressed her hands to her face, her shoulders slumped with shame, and his entire expression seemed to collapse. He glanced up at James as though only just noticing him, and a deep, shuddering coldness spread through James’s chest at the sight of  _ Admiral Hackett _ in the vices of such grief. James saw Hackett to the door, waiting as he put his hat back on his head and steeled himself to face his soldiers again.

“Take care of her,” Hackett said to James in a voice that was not meant to be overheard. James, his mouth dry as sand, nodded.

And then, just like that, he was gone.

James glanced over his shoulder at Shepard; she was just as he’d left her, weeping into her hands, and he knew that he couldn’t drag her back to their apartment like that. So instead he turned to the soldiers and the clerk and told them that Shepard needed a few minutes. He closed the door before they had a chance to reply.

“Hey,” he said gently, crouching beside where she sat and touching a hand to her elbow. “You all right?”

Shepard drew her hands back from her face and gave him a watery smile; her eyes were swollen, her nose and lips red, and yet she looked utterly ethereal in that moment, the most beautiful James had ever seen her. “Don’t ask things like that, Lieutenant.”

He rubbed a hand along the back of her shoulders. She didn’t pull away.

Slowly, James soothed her. He’d known it would come to tears eventually, but he hadn’t imagined it quite like this. He’d expected angry,  _ furious _ tears, maybe some yelling, too. Not… not these gentle, sorrowful tears, so full of bottomless sadness. It was worse, somehow. Eventually Shepard wiped her face and pinched colour back into her cheeks.

“How do I look?” she sniffled, turning to James, who grimaced.

“Like shit.”

Shepard laughed.

 

When they finally got back to their apartment James found that the black cloud had lifted. He kept a hand at Shepard’s back to make sure she didn’t fall, even despite her seeming far more steady on her feet now than she had when she’d first tried to stand from the conference room table. Only when the apartment door hissed shut and they were finally somewhere safe and familiar was he able to breathe properly again.

“That was intense,” he murmured, following Shepard into the bedroom and dodging her shoes as she kicked them off. “How’re you holding up?”

“I’m okay,” Shepard replied. “I…”

“You what?”

Shepard paused, then sighed heavily, as though releasing all the tension she’d been building up over the last few days. “I’m  _ starving. _ ”

James had to bite back a smile. He watched as Shepard flung herself down onto her bed, long limbs dangling off the edges. “Feel like anything in particular?”

“Something… unhealthy. Really greasy, you know?” Then she paused, her eyes flicking in the direction of the kitchenette beyond the bedroom. “And I think it’s time to crack out the medicine.

James bristled a little. Nothing too overt. “But… what about the… you know…” He gestured widely and kept his voice low. Shepard, thankfully, seemed to understand exactly what he meant, and offered him a little smirk. Her forearm glowed as she brought up her omni-tool. The sight of it still made James’s gut lurch.

“I’ve got it covered. You just sort out dinner.”

“When was the last time you had fast food?”

Shepard fixed her eyes on him with the glimmer of a smile as she keyed in a series of letters and numbers, the ruddy orange glow lighting her features from below and making her look… otherworldly. “I take it you don’t mean nutrient paste.”

“You  _ know _ that’s not what I mean.”

James ended up ordering take-out for the first time in years. Two jumbo-sized pizzas laden with all the toppings they could get their hands on, which he heaped onto plates all while wondering just what Shepard was doing with her omni-tool. When Shepard finally came out into the living area, her step had settled into a saunter once more and she seemed a whole lot more relaxed. She leaned against the counter and took the plate from him.

“I looped the surveillance feed.”

James quite literally choked on his food. “You  _ what _ ?”

“I looped the surveillance feed. For all the Alliance knows we’re minding our own business and sleeping early. Oh, James, come on.” She threw him a blithe little smile and went to the cabinet, opening it and bringing out the bottle of rum, hand gripped tight around its throat. “Technology is my biotics. You know that.”

He  _ did  _ know that.

James glanced up at the ceiling; it was strange not to be watched for once. Freeing, almost. He followed Shepard into the living area and sat with her on the sofa as she twisted open the bottle cap. Two glasses sat on the arm of the sofa, distorting the early-evening light as it spilled into the room.

He and Shepard spent the most of that evening on the living room floor flicking through the base’s television channels while eating and drinking, and it felt almost like they weren’t on the base at all; for those few short hours there  _ were  _ no Reapers, no impending end of the galaxy. Shepard sat against the sofa with her legs sprawled out before her and a pizza box in her lap, licking the grease from her fingers.

And in that moment, when Shepard sat there with half-closed eyes still a little red from crying and with a glass of rum in her hand, James realised that there was hope for her. Nobody had shown Shepard any care whatsoever since the  _ Normandy _ ’s handover. He was all she had. And she, too, had somehow become his entire world. The thought made him shiver.

He couldn’t help but stare as he thought, and Shepard, catching him, only closed her eyes and smiled.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i keep constantly forgetting about this fic until i open google docs and end up rereading it for the 9238483947238479234th time
> 
> tw for semi-graphic depictions of gore/violence, alcohol, lots and LOTS of dialogue, more self-indulgent character-building, and some good ol' smoochin

James went to bed that night with warmth lying heavy and comfortable in his belly. Whether it was the food or the rum or something  _ else  _ he wasn’t quite sure. He didn’t particularly care. He fell asleep to the sound of Shepard’s breathing.

When he woke in the early hours of the morning, however, he squinted through the darkness and saw Shepard’s bed empty.

Silence pounded in his ears. The glowing digits of the clock beside his bed told him that it was just past two o’clock in the morning; the deadest hours, when even the distant blink of shuttle lights was muted and the city stretched dark and sleepy beyond their window. Whatever comfort he’d felt before was ebbing, replaced by cold fear. Shepard being awake at this hour could mean  _ anything. _

It was only when he’d gotten up and padded out into the hall that he heard the distinct touch of glass against glass. He followed that sound, the whisper of it, until he stood in the doorway of the living area, a silent, hulking shadow shrouded in the apartment’s darkness. And he saw her, too, leaning against the window and gazing out over the city, the line of her hip sinuous against the light, a glass in her hand. Her back was to him; the night had leached all colour from the world, but the rum in her hand somehow remained red as it sluiced around its glass, which glimmered with the reflection of her cybernetic scars. James had almost forgotten about them.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she told him before turning. Of course she knew he was there - foolish of him to think he’d be able to sneak up on her. Guiltily, James emerged from the darkness as joined her at the window. She offered him her glass. He took it.

“Something bothering you?” he asked as he took a drink; his voice came out rough, still a little skewed with sleep. Shepard looked at him, then - it wasn’t just a glance, but a full-on appraisal, her eyes bright and lips a little parted. She looked at him and James could’ve sworn he  _ felt  _ it, the heat against his skin, before she turned and shook her head. She picked up the bottle and let herself sink onto the sofa with a ragged, heavy sigh.

Eventually he sat himself down beside her. The distance was a little less than respectful, their knees very nearly touching, and a thrill raced through James’s blood at the closeness.

“I’ve been thinking,” Shepard began quietly, looking across at him with mellow eyes. “Y’know, about what you said. Words meaning things and all. I think you’re right.” She took a long drink, then. For courage, perhaps. “I - my life’s always been chaotic. Bad things have happened. Very bad things. This isn’t the first time I’ve been told to talk about it, and I’ve tried before, but it was all a lie. I told the truth, but it was a lie, somehow. The stories meant nothing. I was saying the words, but I was still keeping all the emotions shut up. Nobody ever figured that out, though. But you -,” she broke off with a disbelieving laugh. “You! You pegged it right away.”

He hadn’t expected that. Unsure how to react, he took the bottle from her and took a drink. The liquor went down surprisingly easy.

“How did you know?”

James looked at her, his eyes drawn by the softness of her voice. Her gaze was fixed on him, her body turned slightly in his direction, arm leaning against the back of the couch. He shrugged.

“I do the same thing.”

There was a pause. Shepard was still, her heart beating heavy in her throat before she swallowed and leaned down to retrieve the bottle from the floor, taking a long drink from it.

“I think we have more things in common than we thought,” Shepard murmured. James agreed with her, though he didn’t say it. He merely held out his glass and let Shepard fill it.

“So do you wanna talk about it?”

“Only if you tell me the  _ real  _ reason you got stuck on this job.”

James held her eyes for a moment. “All right.”

Shepard looked away from him, instead turning her gaze towards the city. The afternoon had begun to fade into evening, the magnificent gold of sunset overcome by a colder light not quite purple and not quite blue, but somewhere in between; light faded, and the city slowly came to life before them, light flickering on like the opening of many small eyes, or the dawning of many stars.

“I was… posted to a colony in the Terminus Systems a few years ago. Fehl Prime.” Apprehension rose on his tongue; was it really wise to tell Shepard this? Maybe not, he reasoned, but he’d started now, and if there was anybody who would understand what he’d been through, it would be Shepard. So he pushed his fear to one side and pushed on, staring down into the depths of his glass. “My squad responded to a Blood Pack attack, y’know, like I told you about. We kicked their asses and ended up staying to help the colony rebuild, and since it’s one of the Alliance’s top producers of pharmaceuticals, I guess they figured it was a wise move to give them some protection. We were there for two years after the attack helping them fix things up. I made friends with some of the colonists. There was a girl there, April, she… she was like a little sister to me, in the end.”

A long silence followed. He still remembered April with such clarity: her gleaming hair the colour of sunbeams, the way her cheeks had dimpled when she’d smiled, the weight of her upon his shoulders and the squeal of her laugh. He’d been so happy with her - he’d never had family, not  _ real  _ family, but April had made him feel like he did. The thought of her - what had become of her - made him sick.

“You mentioned that before,” she said, voice hushed. “You… what happened?”

“She died. They all did - the whole colony. The Collectors took them and I  _ could  _ have saved them -,”

Warmth bloomed across the back of his hand; he glanced down to see Shepard’s fingers curled around his clenched fist, her touch gentle. “You couldn’t have,” she whispered. Their heads were leaned so close that her forehead almost brushed his temple. “Nobody would have been able to save them.”

“But I… I had the choice. To save them or to save information about the Collectors.” He didn’t need to say which one he chose. It was obvious enough already. But he needed to say it. “I chose the information and let them all die.”

Shepard leaned her head upon her hand. Sympathy - empathy, even - had softened her features, and in the hazy glow from the city she looked almost young again. James caught a glimpse of Shepard in her youth: when she was in her twenties, full of fire and passion and fury, drop-dead gorgeous and with an attitude to match. Much of that had mellowed out over the years, whittled away by trauma and exhaustion and age, and yet she had acquired a new kind of… something. James couldn’t quite find the word.  _ Awe-some _ , perhaps, in the sense that she struck both fear and awe into those who worked with (and against) her. The firelight of her youth had turned into smouldering embers; she had matured, he realised, tempered by war and life in the military. And, Christ, if he didn’t admire her for it. He  _ desired _ her in a completely different way, one he’d never experienced before. He still wasn’t sure what to make of it, but here, with Shepard’s hand on his and her body this close, he didn’t really mind.

“You made a sacrifice,” she said. “Things like that… they’re hard. I know. And they don’t leave you, not ever, no matter how justifiable the cause may be - but you’ve got to bear it, James. You just have to. It’s over now. It’s done. If you let that sort of shit eat away at you then there’s only one way to go: down.”

Shepard’s words and the clear, matter-of-fact tone of her voice settled something that had been churning up James’s conscience ever since Fehl Prime.  _ Shit happens. _

“Hey, foul play, Shepard.  _ You’re  _ supposed to be talking to  _ me, _ not the other way ‘round.” James took a drink; the rum was working its magic on him, now, and sat warm in his belly.

“Okay.” Shepard took another swig from the bottle before placing it down on the floor beside the couch. “My first off-world posting was in the Terminus Systems. It was a frigate - a beautiful ship. A bit ugly to look at, but my God did she move fast. My CO was an N7, too.” She sighed, nostalgia rising along her breath. “It was called the  _ San Adrestia _ . My squad… we mainly dealt with criminals. Mercenaries, slavers, drug rings, that sort of thing. High-risk and high-reward missions. We were young and talented and wanted nothing more than to take down criminals and make the galaxy a safer place for everyone.” And then she laughed. “We were so proud of ourselves for that.”

James was silent. Breath baited.

“Do you know anything about Mindoir, James?”

The question came unexpectedly. He glanced at her; she was still gazing at him, her face hazy with distant sadness and tainted by the darkening, bluish hue of the night as it fell. Mindoir… the name sounded familiar. After a second he realised that Hannah Shepard had mentioned that same word during their call, though it had sounded quite different then, and had been nestled in between unintelligible words. James fidgeted with his collar and admitted that he hadn’t.

Shepard averted her eyes, suddenly unable to look at him. “It was a colony, probably not unlike Fehl Prime. Probably a beautiful place, once, too. The  _ San Adrestia  _ was one of the ships who responded to their distress call after batarian slavers hit. Everything we did in the time leading up to the raid on Mindoir - everything we’d  _ seen _ \- was nothing like what happened there. Mostly it was just pockets of mercenaries, drug cartels, slavers… but that raid was something else.” She was silent, then, her teeth worrying at her lower lip. Memories rose, cloudy, to her eyes. “Most of my squadmates were killed. My CO, too. I watched as they shot her right through the chest. I couldn’t do anything except hold her as she died.”

James watched her carefully. With each word Shepard retreated a little farther into her memories, and James had already poised himself to reach out and grab her if she slipped in too deep. This wasn’t like when she’d told him about Akuze. There was none of that detachment: she was  _ feeling  _ this.

“I… saw things. Evil things. They took families from their homes,  _ innocent  _ families, split up the men from the women and children. Shot a whole bunch just for fun. Raped them in the street, sometimes in groups, laughing. Set the colony on fire and laughed as it burned. They made the colonists watch, too. Shot the kids and the grandparents, anyone who wasn’t of value, they… they made a sport of it. And then they… they have these things, you know, these chips that they push up into the skull, into the brain. Like a black box. It makes humans into slaves, controls them, subdues them. I saw as they cut open those people and…” Shepard’s face twisted into an awful grimace. “They didn’t spare anyone, even the littlest children. I couldn’t do anything. I saw… I saw babies lying dead in the streets. Those of us who hadn’t been killed were forced to hide. There were so  _ many _ , and they were crazed, driven by bloodlust and the fire -,”

He could see it in her eyes: the flames leaping as tall as trees, the howls of the batarians as they lead their prizes through fields of carcasses. Dead babies discarded like garbage in the gutter. Flowing blood, so much blood, always blood - these were the things Shepard saw in her sleep. James knew what those criminal gangs were capable of. He’d seen it first-hand, after all, the relentless antics of Terminus mercenaries. But slavers… he’d only heard rumours about the slavers. Cold fingers inched up his spine at the thought of it.

Shepard’s voice had dropped to a murmur and her face had grown dark. “They cut off their heads,” she said. “Beat them. Cut open their necks so their spines hung out -,”

“Hey,” James said quietly, drawing in close and taking hold of her elbow. The touch seemed to jolt Shepard back to the surface, and she looked at him, the shadows beneath her eyes suddenly so much more pronounced. “Stay with me, Shepard.”

His words drew a breath from her - it was the same kind of breath as one takes just before letting out a sob, trembling and painful, and yet she didn’t cry. She merely shook her head and turned herself into his touch, her back to the city and her face falling into shadow so he could no longer see it. Her hand closed tightly around his forearm. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise. You did good.” He stroked his thumb over the skin of her upper arm. It was a discomfitingly familiar gesture, certainly out of line for people in their position, and yet he did it anyway. “Permission to say something stupid?”

That, at least, brought a smile to her lips. “Permission granted.”

“You’ve come one hell of a long way since we met, Shepard. You might not see it, but I do: you kept on going, held yourself afloat. And… I’m real proud of you for that.”

He was affronted with that same look of surprise as he had been during their walk; this time, though, Shepard didn’t move an inch. She just looked at him, and her eyes seemed gold instead of red, her skin flawless and without a single seam, as though his words had healed her just for a second. Her gaze lingered on his face: the line of his nose, the scar on his cheek. She’d fallen down a slippery slope and she knew it - he was her only friend, the only cure to her abject loneliness, and her heart had tripped over itself in its haste to cling to him, to cling to any support it could get. And he, foolishly, had given it.

Her fingers were warm against the side of his face. It was a gentle touch, her eyes half-lidded and considering as they roamed over his face, her thumb stroking over his cheek. “You’ve made me a fool, James Vega,” she murmured, her breath washing sweet across his lips. “An absolute fucking fool.”

Something inside James snapped. Shepard was too close,  _ touching  _ him with such tenderness, and he lost control over his body, pushing his nose against her cheek and tilting his chin in just a way that let him press his lips to the corner of her mouth.

“Maybe you made me a fool, too.”

Shepard didn’t look shocked. Her nose touched his and her eyes grew darker, somehow, blackness swallowing the glowing gold of her irises. Her fingers dipped to his lips. Touched them. And then she kissed him back, full on the mouth, and she tasted like honey and stinging rum and sunlight. James pressed back against her lips and was rewarded with the sweetest sigh he’d ever heard in his life.

“This is a bad idea,” Shepard murmured. “I’ll get you into trouble.”

But James didn’t care, because having Shepard under his lips was infinitely more important to him than anything else at that moment. He leaned towards her, catching her lips again and feeling the sharp bite of her teeth. He told her he didn’t care and could’ve sworn he heard her  _ purr _ .

Shepard abandoned the bottle to cradle his face in her hands, kissing him over and over and over again; James’s hands found their way to her waist, and before he knew it he’d pulled her into his lap and her hands were in his hair, her thighs heavy and powerful around his hips. He could barely breathe; Shepard stole the breath from his lungs and made his heart gallop behind his ribs. He wondered if she could feel it; from the way she placed her palm against his chest and chuckled, she probably could.

“Am I making you nervous, Lieutenant?”

There was a shift to her voice not unlike the ones he’d hear in his dreams. He was reminded of them and his entire body reacted; she shifted in his lap and he looked up at her half-lidded eyes, at her smile and the flush against her cheeks, and all he could do was open and close his mouth. He’d never felt like such an utter idiot before in his life.

“Well, uh, I mean… uh. A little.”

Shepard held his face in her hands just like she did during their walk. It took only that tiny gesture for James to feel better; there was such unbridled  _ affection  _ in her gaze, a softness to her that was such a stark contrast to when he’d first met her. And…  _ he’d  _ done that. He’d helped her get back in touch with her tender emotions. With friendship. With  _ hope _ . She kissed him and he pulled her body against his, winding his arms around her and  _ holding  _ her, because Shepard deserved that much. God only knew how long it had been since she’d been just… held.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to him. “I never - I didn’t  _ mean  _ for it to come to this, I -,”

“Take it easy,” James murmured, reaching up to smooth the hair back from her face. “I get it. I do.”

And that, it seemed, was enough. Shepard sagged with relief and they sat there, silently, with James’s arms wrapped tight about her and her face pressed against his neck. He’d never been so glad for his muscles… that alone was enough to make his face heat up.

“How long did you loop the feed for?” he asked.

“Until six.” Her breath was hot against his neck. James swallowed a shiver.

Perhaps it was the rum. Perhaps it was because it was two-thirty in the morning - whatever the reason, James felt the solid weight of confidence rising in his throat, and before he could change his mind he hauled Shepard into his arms and began to carry her back towards the bedroom. The startled (but delighted) gasp that punched from Shepard’s lungs was reward enough.

“I hope this trick of yours works,” he said. “Or else I’ll get fired.”

Shepard laughed a low, warm laugh, stroking her hand across the back of his neck. “It  _ will  _ work.”

Once they got back to the bedroom James let Shepard drop onto her bed before joining her; it was narrow, which made things a rather tight fit, but eventually they managed to twist and wriggle enough to find comfort. James lay with Shepard against him, her head cushioned by his bicep and his hands in her hair. He kissed her again. And again. And again, until she was laughing breathlessly against his lips and pushing her knee up between his legs, drawing out a number of undignified sounds from his throat. Shepard liked those. A  _ lot _ .

“Let’s just… lie like this for a while,” she murmured sleepily. As much as James liked where this whole situation was going, it was  _ late _ , and he was tired as well. So they lay there, a tangle of blankets and limbs, until sleep inevitably took over them both.

Neither of them had ever slept so well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> theyre gonna bang one day i SWEAR


End file.
